The Bottom Of A Swimming Pool
by d-dulcet
Summary: There comes a moment after the war ends, when Katara opts to stay in the Fire Nation with Zuko, that she realizes his body is healing but his mind is not, and not every wound can be fixed by her touch. [AU]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Do I, a 20 year old full-time college student, have the time to be writing a multi-chapter fanfic? No, probably not. Am I going to undertake this task anyway? Yes, so please take it easy on me. Anyway, hello there, and thanks for taking the time to read this fic. In summary, this is an AU of what would've happened if Kataang didn't kiss at the end of _A:TLA_ and if Katara and Zuko had gone on a trip to find his mother. Different than the comics of course, and slightly inspired by _Tempest In a Teacup_ by AkaVertigo.

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She has nightmares now. Granted, she's had nightmares for as long as she can remember. When she was little, she would dream of the Fire Nation soldiers, faceless as they were soulless, plundering her village, week after week, month after month, year after year. She'd dream of the way fire would dance across the igloos of her neighbors, taunting them as it disintegrated what little they had, and how, even when she and her family would huddle in their hut, bones aching and bodies chilly, with the only relief being the small kindling and flickering flames at her feet, she'd want nothing more than to spit at it than to admit they needed the warmth.

Sometimes in her nightmares, she can hear her mother, from over a decade ago, whispering soothing words in her ears. Her body still shakes like it did in her childhood; she can still remember how indignantly she'd cross her arms when Sokka would make some comment about how she needed to stop being "scared" all the time and just live a little (and she was _not_ scared of _anything_ by the way, she was _cold_ , thank you very much and even if she _was_ scared—which she wasn't—it would be completely justified). She made sure she said that any time it came up.

"Don't worry my love," Kya had whispered, far too long ago. "I'll never let anyone take you away." Many of Katara's old nightmares were that she'd wake up one day and find that her mother was wrong. Now she wakes up, frenzied and crying, choking on guilt and grief, because it turns out her mother was right.

But tonight, she knows she's going to have new nightmares. It's the environment she's in, the Fire Nation palace; a place she never dreamed of being in or belonging to. She clings to the red satin covers that surround her but she can't help but feel like she's _intruding_ somehow. Which she isn't. Zuko told her that she could spend the night here and he'd sleep in an adjacent wing. It seemed a bit improper for him to share a room with her if it was just the two of them and he had been too lazy (or maybe he was trying to hide how much pain he was truly in) to explain the specifics of palace etiquette.

It was after the duel had finished. Azula had long since given up on crying and resigned only to lying on the ground, cold, drenched, but still breathing.

"I'll send someone out for her," Zuko said. "But for right now, we need to sleep. I'll take you to an empty room." Katara nodded. She could tell from his body language, the way his shoulders were slumped, the tightness in his voice, the way he forced words past his teeth that he was speaking through pain. No amount of sleep would cure the kind of exhaustion he felt.

Still, he escorted her to the room personally, and Katara could tell from the tenseness of his jaw that he was struggling just to walk without her help. Another image to disturb her when she slept. In a voice that was awfully detached for how close they'd become, he thanked her again for saving him and bowed before her. She stared, and when he didn't get the cue, she gave him a long and lingering hug, and tried not to draw too much attention to the fact that his body was still violently trembling under the surface of her touch.

Right now, she tosses and turns and buries her face in the rich, red pillows, but nothing can make the bed she's in feel welcoming, feel like a home, but she knows it's all circumstantial. The comet is still passing and, even though she was able to tend to Zuko's wound, he's in no condition to travel. He's still twitching and his reflexes seem to be lagging and every movement seems so labored and forced. She can only imagine what it'd be like if he had to explain to the others what had happened in the Agni Kai whilst in his current state. All the commotion wouldn't be good for him either and, unfortunately, he has nowhere else to go but here. The palace is where he lives. Briefly, for one fleeting moment, Katara wonders if he has nightmares too. Maybe in his wing, he's lying in bed, twitching from the lightning flickering underneath his skin, knowing that nothing will make him feel at home.

The sound of flames erupting from somewhere outside is enough to let her know that he's not doing that. At least not yet.

She swings one foot out of bed, and then the other, walking down the maze of hallways that make up the palace. It's all guessing, fumbling her way through the dimness until she finds the courtyard again, and Zuko is out there, watching as guards come to take Azula away. Katara's too far, but she can see how Azula's fighting it, begging and pleading for another chance to duel her brother and lashing out when she realizes her demands will no longer be obeyed. Katara can see it clearly now, what Zuko was saying about how his sister was slipping. Azula isn't even a shell of who she used to be. It's almost sad.

It's been a while since Katara's had new material for her thoughts, since Aang nearly lost his life in Ba Sing Se. She remembers how it felt to wake up, night after night on a Fire Nation ship and feel like the cool metal walls were closing in on her. She knows that this is an image that will soon be joining her inventory. She can only imagine what her mind will do now, with a vision of Zuko, writhing in pain, stamped into her mind, and the sound of Azula screaming in agony latching to her eardrums.

 _I'm not you Zuko!_ Azula yells, and though Katara doesn't have any context for that particular statement, her heart drops when Zuko shouts back, _It's painful to be the failure for once, isn't it?_

Azula is dragged away before the arguing can escalate further but Katara remains hidden behind a pillar, looking at Zuko while he watches his sister get detained. He's tense and shaking all at once; stiff and rigid like the earth, fluid and unreliable like lightning, until his head falls back, and he lets one long stream of breath leave his lips. The flames come from the back of his throat; they swirl from his tongue and twist up and out, into the air. He closes his mouth and inhales before he does it once, then twice more.

 _It's not anger_ , Katara thinks, the way most firebending seems to be fueled. He's not enraged and passionate the way she's seen him so many times before. He's letting the negativity out. He's letting his anger go.

Katara walks up, slowly and quietly as not to startle him, but he stops his ministrations anyway.

"I thought you were asleep," Zuko says over his shoulder. Katara shrugs and walks until she's standing beside him.

"You need to rest, Zuko," she says. She places a hand on his shoulder for a moment to comfort him, maybe for emphasis. Maybe she thinks it'll make her point stronger. "You were badly injured."

"I could've died today," he says, a reminder that Katara's comment was an understatement. He flicks his wrist up at the sky and a rush of fire follows an invisible trail that he's provided. For the first time, Katara sees firebending and doesn't feel fear.

"I'm sorry," she says, though it's for more than just the fact that he'd offered himself up as a human shield for her. She doesn't know what to say to him. _It's going to be alright_ doesn't seem fitting. She's not even sure if it will. When the war ends she'll have a family to return to, a family that has loved her unconditionally for all of her years, while Zuko will be in a nation that once rejected him, and the weight of the world on his shoulders. It's unfair.

"When I was out there, I couldn't think," he says, breaking the silence himself. "My chest was caving in on my lungs—my heart wasn't beating fast enough. I couldn't think, I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. I thought I was going to die. And that's how I felt during Sozin's comet. That's how I felt on my most powerful day." The air is humid and carries the weight of his heavy words. It's calm. It's quiet. Katara doesn't know what to say.

Without warning, Zuko steps forward and throws another punch at the sky. Fire shoots from his knuckles. A grunt escapes his lips. The flames spiral up, gold and red and hot, before they dissipate into nothingness. When all the flames and smoke and heat are gone, Zuko drops to his knees.

Katara looks at his firebending, and now she feels pity.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** idk this is lowkey filler, I just wanted to update this and get the ball rolling plot wise **edit: i wrote six hours instead of six weeks initially so i changed it because i was really lazy with editing**

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Approximately six weeks after Zuko's coronation, Katara declares that she's going to stay in the Fire Nation. The gaang's in the Earth Kingdom when she makes this decision, stating that when everyone goes their separate ways, she'll stay by Zuko's side. Everyone's sitting at a table drinking tea, Sokka and Suki cuddled next to one another, Toph with her feet propped up beside a beaming Iroh, and Aang, between Katara and Mai, the latter of which had taken her seat besides Zuko.

The announcement comes as a surprise to all of them, including the newly crowned Fire Lord. It's entirely unnecessary for her to stay, when he'd have more than enough medical attention from the doctors in the palace, but she insists that she be the one to make sure that he was healing properly. She was the reason he'd gotten his newest scar. The least she could do was spare a few weeks to assure he was going to be fine.

The rest of the group opts to leave the Fire Nation for other reasons. Sokka and Suki make plans to escort Toph back to her family before making their way to Kyoshi Island. Aang would have to travel the world and help make amends between the nations. That only left Katara, with her tight set jaw, and her new decision to remain by Zuko's side. Mai, despite being quiet and civil for most of the day, seems less than enthused by Katara's proclamation.

Toph's neutral about the matter, not caring where Katara went so long as she remembered to visit. Sokka respects her wish and offers to meet up with his sister down south in a few months time. Rebuilding the Southern Water Tribe is important, but it's equally important to Sokka that he respect his sister's wishes and let her take care of whatever unfinished business she feels she has. Iroh is elated to hear that one of the best healers in the world offered to care for his nephew until he's well, and graciously thanks Katara for her warmhearted gesture.

"You don't have to do this," Zuko says, effectively ending the supportive murmurs of his friends. He avoids eye contact because knows what this is really about. It's the same feeling he had when he opened up to Katara in the catacombs and she was whisked away, a feeling of bareness and transparency, knowing that _she_ knew too much, she'd seen too much, and all she wanted to do was to stay and dig deeper. She wanted to know more about him. She wanted to make sure he was okay. They both knew with time his skin would regenerate and heal, but she wanted to make sure he was healing internally and emotionally as well. He isn't sure how to feel.

"I don't," Katara says. "But I want to."

For the first time that day, Mai scoffs, audibly and dramatically with a roll of her eyes. Zuko doesn't fault her for it really. He knows it will be a learning process (or maybe 'unlearning process' is the proper way to describe it) for Mai to switch from exuding Fire Nation propaganda to accepting his decisions and friends.) So far since their reunion, Mai has learned to control her tongue and avoid making comments she knows would instigate a fight, and for that, Zuko is grateful. But he knows the kind of change she has to undergo isn't linear, and it was only a matter of time before Mai would slip into a slight regression.

What really throws Zuko off is Aang. The young avatar matches Mai's demeanor, and even makes a few comments asking _why_ Katara would ever want to stay _in the Fire Nation_ of all places (which Zuko doesn't take offense too. He understands that his nation isn't the most welcoming and why Aang might have reservations about his former waterbending instructor staying in a country that could've imprisoned her just for existing a month or two ago.)

It doesn't go unnoticed though, that Aang is the only one voicing these concerns.

Zuko looks at Katara, to ask if she herself has any hesitations about staying with him, but her eyes don't meet his; they're burning a hole in his green silk robe where she knows Azula struck him. He wraps an arm around his torso, and Katara's gaze automatically shifts to meet Zuko's amber eyes.

The argument is already done. Past experience tells Zuko that there's no changing Katara's mind, no matter how hard Mai glares and scoffs, or how much Aang pouts and pleads. The rest of the gaang seems to think the same, as they all stay silent on the matter.

"It's been decided," Katara reiterates. Zuko turns to Mai when he hears his girlfriend sigh quietly, but as she has been doing all afternoon, she doesn't say a word. Katara crosses her arms in a way that says _my decision is final,_ and, despite the wavering in Aang's eyes that says he wants nothing more than to convince Katara to stay with him, he falls silent too.

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That night, before the sun fully sets and before they board the ship back to the Fire Nation, Zuko holds Katara shoulders and asks _are you sure?_ knowing fully well that she'll say yes. Her dark brown hair sways with the gentle sea breeze and she's smiling at him, warm and genuine as Mai quietly boards the ship before them. Zuko imagines that he might get reprimanded for this later, but now his main focus is on Katara, and making sure that her stay, no matter how long, is one that is comfortable and free of stress. He can feel his own shaggy hair shifting in the breeze and he only asks her one more question. In the wake of the strain he's seen in her relationship with Aang, Zuko asks, ' _is it worth it?'_ to which Katara hesitates, pauses, and thinks before she nods and wholeheartedly replies, ' _yes, you are.'_

Zuko asks no more questions, and returns to Mai for the rest of the night.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** fun prank idea: don't actually prank me. Keep leaving me nice reviews because I appreciate them and they motivate me to keep going. (p.s i had so many ideas for what this chapter could be about that i literally overwhelmed myself can you believe that r.i.p me)

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Katara thinks, just moments after stepping onto the ship, that she may have forced herself somewhere she doesn't belong. It's a slow building feeling; when Zuko shows her to her chamber and bids her goodnight, she feels suffocated by the metal walls and red insignias, and the only thing that can bring her to sleep is the faint sound of crashing waves. When they reach their destination the next morning, she feels out of place, with her dark skin and blue eyes and thick wavy hair in a sea of pale skin and golden irises. She hears the whispers of the maids when she trails behind Mai and Zuko through the courtyard; she feels the reluctance of the palace staff to greet her upon Zuko's request. Still, she doesn't show her discomfort. She holds her head high and walks as tall as she can. She's here for Zuko and only for Zuko. All she can do is be civil.

The first few days are the hardest by far, with no one really knowing how Katara is supposed to fit into the palace. Some of the maids mistake her as some sort of prisoner of war, to be trained to cater to Fire Lord Zuko and other Fire Nation royalty as any other captive would―which nearly leads to an all out brawl when Katara (rightfully) takes it offensively and chews out every person in the room. Luckily, Zuko overhears the commotion and manages to coax her away from the situation to keep it from escalating further, but he doesn't have the power to mend the strained relationship between his friend and his caretakers. Regardless, no one makes the mistake of referring to her as anything less than Zuko's equal from then onward. In fact, most of the staff doesn't refer to her at all.

It's subtle, the way they talk to her through Zuko only; ' _is your guest comfortable, Fire Lord Zuko?'_ , ' _has your companion stated that she's interested in learning about our customs or etiquette_ _?'_ He looks at her apologetically when this happens, and she knows it's not his fault at all. They're up against a hundred years of war. They have a century worth of bigotry to unteach. She can't expect the shunning to end in a matter of days.

It's just all too similar to the way _Mai_ acts towards her that Katara can't help but take it to heart.

Katara tries to be friendly. She smiles at the older girl, who has also taken up residence in the palace. Katara doesn't know much about the customs of the Fire Nation, but she's certain that if it's improper for a woman of nobility to move into her boyfriend's home before marriage, her own presence as a Water Tribe peasant clearly overshadows it. For the most part, Katara is prepared for the gossip and the ostracizing, but she hadn't expected to receive it in such a high volume, and she really hadn't planned on receiving it from Mai.

But... It's not entirely hostile. Occasionally Mai says good morning (or afternoon, or evening) though she never says Katara's name, and from time to time she'll ask how the younger girl is. ( _Are you hungry? Do you need anything? Is your room okay?_ ) Katara is positive Zuko tells Mai to do this, but Katara accepts it anyway. Besides Zuko and Iroh, who checks in with her frequently for a cup of tea or a game of Pai Sho, this is the closest thing Katara has to friendship right now, even if it's obvious that Mai is uninterested by anything Katara says or does.

She can't expect the shunning to end in a matter of days.

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"Maybe you can't heal everything," Mai says flatly. Her gold eyes are dull and bored, nothing like Zuko's which are bright and shining and full of passion, and Katara isn't sure what to say. They're at dinner when this takes place, the three of them, Zuko, Mai, and Katara, when the former of the women makes that statement. Zuko and Mai are side by side at one corner while Katara is seated at the other end. The palace staff still whisper around her but they've gotten much better at hiding their feelings. Instead of muttered whispers asking " _what on Earth was Fire Lord Zuko thinking bringing a Water Tribe peasant to the palace?_ ", their words are a lot more flowery and backhanded. " _Perhaps she'll start learning etiquette soon and lose her barbaric mannerisms_ ", " _she's not that unprepossessing when you think about it; she really could be such a lovely girl_."

Katara hoped to escape these catty words at dinner. For the nth time in her life, Katara's hope goes to waste.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Katara asks, gripping her cup a little too tightly. She drinks more than she eats now that she's in the Fire Nation. She's not too fond of the taste of anything that the cooks prepare. Nothing served here is familiar, but she doesn't want to hurt Zuko's feelings, even if he can see the food she's constantly leaving untouched or feeding to turtleducks rather than eating herself.

Of course though, she knows what Mai's talking about. Zuko's been alright, as far as things go, but his constant spasming, while dying down quite a bit, is still present, so much so that Katara was worried he'd be like that for the rest of his life. She also knows other people have suffered unfortunate fates trying to protect her. Zuko now has a scar branded on his chest and slight loss of motor control as a result of fighting for her, and for that, Katara is as grateful as she is guilty. Still, she doesn't need anyone's scrutiny about her abilities, especially not Mai's.

"It means exactly what I said," Mai states again. She's not facing Katara, not at all; Mai's body is turned towards Zuko, her head, her eyes, her shoulders, as if she's speaking solely to him. He looks back at her, but spares Katara a glance.

"She doesn't mean anything by it," Zuko tells Katara. "I'm thankful for everything you're doing." He stops to give Mai a pointed look. "We _both_ are."

"Don't baby her, Zuko," Mai says. "She's healing your wound; that's all fine and dandy. But I think she's wasting her energy trying to fix you completely. She can't heal everything."

Katara contemplates arguing back (though it's hard to label Mai's remarks as arguing. Her tone is so deadpan and flat that realistically she's probably just stating an otherwise neutral opinion with no real intention to start a discussion). Like clockwork, Zuko's muscles begin to spasm, seizing and tightening against his will while he grits his teeth and he waits for the episode to pass like all the others do. Mai, having never turned away from him, puts a hand on his chest, her pale fingers splayed on his red silk robes, stroking him tenderly, and muttering quiet, soothing nothings to calm his mind until he regains control of his body.

Katara sits by and watches, unable to heal.

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Katara finds herself in Zuko's quarters often, more often than any young, unmarried woman should be entering the room of a man, just for the sake of checking on him periodically. To be fair, she hasn't got anyone else to go to. Iroh is there, but he's still much, much older, and while she appreciates the company he provides, she still craves interaction from someone her age. She sees potential with Mai— _possibly_ —but until any progress is made on that front, all she has is Zuko.

Sometimes, Zuko laughs when she comes, curt and quiet, as not to agitate the wound on his chest. It's their thing now, but more importantly, they _have_ a thing, something secret between them, and the thought is so precious that Katara wants to do anything to protect the time she and Zuko have together.

"Again?" he'll ask, as she trudges into his room with a pail, splashing water all across the floor behind her. Mai isn't in his chamber often, as not to sully her own name by inviting herself to the Fire Lord's room and appearing as a mistress, rather than his girlfriend. Katara has no such reservations. She'll knock to make her presence know and barge right in, grinning and giggling as she does so. It almost feels like she's a child again, getting excited to find her best friend so they can play; she plays the doctor and he plays the patient and they talk and snicker until reality reminds them of their responsibilities outside of the room.

Most of the time when Katara comes, Zuko rolls his eyes to hide his smile. He'll asks if it's time for her to check on him yet again, and when she nods enthusiastically, he'll laugh until it's physically painful to do so. He's no medic, nor is he a master healer like she is, but even he knows it's unnecessary for her to be changing his bandages as often as she does. It's more psychological really, just something to comfort her, for her to have a reason to make sure he's okay, and for him as well. There's something soothing about seeing her waddle into his room unannounced at all hours, determined and optimistic, even if the coolness of her touch when she presses her hand into his chest stings a little.

"You know, if you want to check on me, you can just do so," Zuko says before she leaves. "You don't have to prove that you're in here healing me all day."

"And give your court even more of a reason to bad mouth me?" Katara asks. "Absolutely not, _Fire_ _Lord Zuko_." She says the title with a bit of irony, because they both know she'll submit to no man. Still, her teasing is harmless. It's a fresh, warm feeling to Zuko, unlike the teasing he's received from Azula over the years that always left him flustered and hurt, or the teasing Mai attempts that far too often leaves him feeling confused and a little insecure. He feels no ill intent, no maliciousness at Katara's joking, and he is infinitely more grateful for her than his smile can explain.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** i have this really great headcanon that was supposed to go in this chapter but it didn't really fit so it has to go elsewhere isn't that tragic? anyways if you didn't know i write all these chapters right before i post them **edit: based on a review written by** **XTarantismX** **, i went and italicized the flashback in this chapter to make it more clear**

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"Are you doing okay?" Katara asks, one day as she's sitting at the foot of Zuko's bed. She's long since checked him out for the day, making sure his bandages are clean and suitable, his heart rate normal, his motor skills as fine tuned as one could expect after the trauma he suffered. Mai wanted to be present at the rendezvouses when she first heard about them (probably from the gossiping staff, Katara supposes), but she'd become bored with watching her beloved be examined by the waterbender, and she soon decided it be best not to show her face at all. Still, Katara considers it progress that Mai doesn't feel the need to be around (perhaps this is a subtle way of Mai showing some trust?) and there's at least one less person she has to prove herself to.

"Of course I'm alright," he says, slowly flexing and relaxing the muscles in his arms to encourage circulation. "You see me every day. You know how I'm doing." It's true, she's had the chance to check on him every day in the time she's spent thus far in his nation and physically he does seem to be doing better. His spasming, which is much less violent and debilitating, has decreased exponentially. Even though he still goes into fits, his body control is _almost_ comparable to what it was before the Agni Kai. But, when his muscles twitch, Katara finds herself waiting for the moment he seizes up like he did during Sozin's comet and be left on the floor, clutching his chest and trying his best not to die and—

She has nightmares, especially about _him_.

Still, physical progress doesn't mean he's _okay_ , and that's something that Katara is sure Zuko picked up from her tone.

It was Iroh who pointed it out first, that something wasn't quite right with Zuko. The latter was obviously healing in a timely fashion, and doing everything he was supposed to as Fire Lord. He was getting out of bed in the mornings and going to meetings, but when he wasn't needed somewhere, he was hauled in his quarters, silent and secluded from the rest of the world. Katara noticed it too, in the time she spent with him daily, helping him change his bandages and pressing cold water to his chest to soothe his aches. Just because his physicality was improving didn't mean he was getting better. Even with their banter, his rare laughs, and the few, authentic smiles he spared her, Katara knows, deep in her gut, that something isn't right.

"I mean it, Zuko," Katara says. She looks at him, eyes wide and concerned before she looks down at her own lap. As always, she's wearing blue, on top of his red comforter and she looks so, so out of place in his palace, but in his room, she feels welcomed.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Zuko tells her.

"Are you okay?" Katara asks again. He pauses. He'd been lying in bed the whole time she'd spent there, listening to her explain yet again what she was doing to heal him, checking his temperature, gently jabbing him to check his reflexes, all the minor things to make sure he was alright. Now, he sits up to face her better, especially since his chest only hurts some of the time when he's upright. Katara notices when he winces, but she lets it slide.

"Are you?" he asks. He doesn't think about it often, asking how Katara is, because that's not something he's ever really had to do in his life. He grew up as a prince with people waiting on him hand and foot, catering to his every whim. He lived as a refugee silenced and pushed through the streets of the Earth Kingdom. His social skills are lacking, he knows, but he cares. He really does.

It's not entirely his fault, some of this is all up to fate. She's never really needed anything, and too often he'd seen her step up as a maternal figure, strong, level headed, and unwavering, that he's certain even after all they've been through she'll never accept any assistance.

"Yes, Zuko," Katara says, and he has no reason to think that she's lying.

"Then I am too," Zuko says. His words are definite, and Katara knows from past experience that this is the end of the conversation.

She still knows in her heart that something isn't right.

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 _"I don't know if I made the right choice," Katara admits, when she and Zuko board Appa again. It's been nearly a week since they set out to find Yon Rha. Now that they have and she's looked her mother's killer in the eye, all she wants is to go back to the rest of the gaang. At first, it's silent, with Katara steering and Zuko watching from the saddle. He knows from watching his own mother that Katara is crying silently. He's been watching her cry the whole trip. She cries when she's angry, she cries when she was tired, she cries when she's stressed. She cries. Loudly. Angrily. But now she is sobbing, eyes wide and mouth closed, and like all the other times, Zuko waits to see what she says. He's told himself this whole time that if she needs anything, she'll ask, but now he knows she's too stubborn for that. She'd rather cry herself to death than admit she needs anything._

 _"I understand why you did it," Zuko tells her, breaking the silence among them. Katara doesn't reply. She doesn't even face him. But for the first time since he's joined the gaang, she's not yelling at him. Waves crash from miles beneath them, and, as the wind blows behind them, Zuko takes the opportunity to keep talking. "I almost killed the man who took my mother away from me too."_

 _"Yeah?" Katara sniffles. Her voice croaks and her shoulders are slumped, and Zuko can only imagine how red and puffy her eyes might be now. He's tempted to ask if she needs comforting but he knows he should not be the one to do it. She'll come to him, if and when she's ready._

 _"I couldn't do it," Zuko continues, staring at the mass of water that stretches out before them. He vaguely remembers the Day of Black Sun; him, facing his father and having the perfect opportunity to end Ozai's life once and for all. He remembers how it felt for lightning to pass through him and to nearly strike his father the way his father struck him when he was just a child. He remembers picturing Ursa's face, and how, in a split second, he'd made the decision to spare his father and find a new way to avenge his banished mother. "I wish I could have murdered him, but even if I relived that moment, I don't think I would've gone through with it."_

 _"I wouldn't blame you if you had," Katara says. She looks at him, solemn, quiet, soft. He stares right back at her._

 _"I wouldn't blame you if you had either."_

 _She turns back around. They continue back to the rest of the group. Katara continues to cry._

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The next time Katara has a nightmare, she's surrounded by her Fire Nation comforter, clinging to the fabric and muttering Zuko's name in a horrified, anxious tone. She cries so much her throat hurts. She cries so much that her tears stain her jaw. The moonlight dimly illuminates the room, gives her a chance to breathe and calm down. It's not the first bad dream she's had and she knows it won't be her last, not as long as she lives. In her dream, she watches Zuko die, out in the Fire Nation courtyard, sacrificing his life the way his mother sacrificed hers those years ago. Katara had that same dream so many times before that she's almost desensitized to it. Almost, until her mind adds a new twist to make her nightmare worse; at the end of her dream, she looks at Azula, vulnerable, weak, and ready to be attacked, but yet again, just like she fears she would have if Zuko had actually perished, Katara shows mercy.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** what's cooler than being cool? (leaving reviews!) alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright

ok but actually thanks for all the faves and follows and reviews you guys rock :) i promise you that all the slow build up is for a reason and i do have a vision for where this story is going, i just want to take my time in getting there. thanks for showing this story so much love already it makes me so happy xx

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The thing is, Katara can deal with a lot. She can deal with nightmares and waking up in a cold sweat almost every night. She can deal with how out of place this country's citizens make her feel in every sense, from how they dress, to how they talk and how they act. She's only left palace grounds a total of two times since her arrival. The first time she leaves is to accompany Iroh into town to taste some teas and explore the streets. It's a pleasant day, for the most part. Iroh's always been kind to her and he takes the time to ask how she's feeling about the Fire Nation. Katara notices, but never complains, that many of the people they encounter on their walk greet the Dragon of the West with smiles and admiration. These same people, upon noticing Katara's blue attire, do not give her a second glance.

The second time she leaves palace grounds is with Mai, and it's only by Zuko's request. He says that a field trip might be just what she and Mai need to bond and become closer the way he did with the gaang. Unfortunately (or maybe very fortunately, depending on how one looks at it), Mai and Katara spend the time walking an arm's length apart while taking turns awkwardly trying to establish some common ground. They talk about the weather and their favorite fruits and briefly skirt over the discussion of politics. Katara immediately realizes this is a bad idea when Mai groans and rolls her eyes because, in Mai's exact words, "as much as I love Zuko, and as much as I know you'll disagree with this, I'm not sure he's making the right decisions as Fire Lord or putting our country first." (There's emphasis on the word 'our' and Katara feels that much more excluded by the Fire Nation).

Katara genuinely contemplates screaming and tearing her hair out in response, but decides that diverting the conversation back to the hot, sticky summer air and returning to the palace in uncomfortable unison is a better option.

But she can deal with all of this. She can. It makes her ill, emotionally and even a bit physically to take all of this, but she can do it.

Or she tries to convince herself she can.

It's all these little microagressions that she keeps letting slide. She thinks to tell Zuko about this, but she's not sure if anything can fix this except time. It doesn't make sense to worry him, so as much as it burns her, she bites her tongue. She knows it's a bad idea and it's only a matter of time before she explodes, but for now, she decides to be silent.

There's also the fact that Zuko is now becoming a stressor to Katara as well. It's not that he's purposefully trying to shut her out. He's always been somewhat emotionally stunted, and Katara can feel Zuko slowly but surely shutting down on her now that he's reached a plateau in his healing. He's far from being back to his old self but he hasn't really progressed in a while either. In fact, he's been requesting that she make her visits in his room shorter so that he can have more time to relax, to think and breathe, and Katara hasn't argued. She wants to, but it's hard to argue with Zuko when he's lying with his back to her, refusing to say a word until she has no choice but to leave his chamber.

It's very hard for her to be shut out after all they've experienced together, but she can deal with it. If she just toughs it out and stays calm, she can deal with it.

The question she must now ask herself, is not _can_ she, but _should_ she.

.

.

.

There's one spot in the palace, other than Zuko's room, where Katara feels safe and welcomed; the turtleduck pond. Maybe it's the fact that it's a body of water where she can bend to her heart's content, or the little turtleducks that nibble at her boots to greet her. It's warm. It's comforting. She likes her special spot.

The turtleducks surround her as she sits by the pond, quacking quietly when Katara begins to bend water around them, swirling and splashing droplets around her head. It's been a while since she's been able to bend freely like this; she's been so busy devoting her abilities to Zuko that she let the artistic part of her bending fall to the wayside. The turtleducks chirp in delight, and Katara supposes that they may have never seen anything like this before. They've become accustomed to pale skin and blasts of fire that now, they are mesmerized by the brown skinned girl controlling the water above their heads.

In a way, Katara is mesmerized too.

She's almost too deep in thought, bending freely but mindlessly, to notice the footsteps in the grass that approach until a voice interrupts her thoughts.

"Can't sleep?" Katara's concentration breaks and the water she's bending splashes back into the pond. All the turtleducks scatter, frightened by the noise and commotion as Zuko walks over, smiling as he takes a seat beside Katara in the grass. His hair is down instead of in its usual top knot, and his robes, silky and red, are much more casual and dressed down than the cloth he wears on a day to day basis. It almost feels like old times when he sits shoulder to shoulder with her, legs crossed as they both stare quietly at the turtleduck pond.

"What makes you think I can't sleep?" Katara asks.

"If you could, you'd be sleeping right now," Zuko replies. Katara smiles sheepishly and Zuko continues to speak. "I'm not trying to lecture you on the importance of getting a full night's rest, Katara. I come here when I need to think too."

"I don't need to think," she assures him. "I don't wanna think about anything anymore." Zuko eyes her, waiting for her to get his nonverbal prompting but she doesn't take the hint. Instead, he flicks his wrist and snaps his fingers, making tiny flames spring and dance at his fingertips.

"I find it hard to believe that you'd come all the way out here just to _not_ think." Zuko strikes his thumb and forefinger against each other and a particularly large flame lights the air for a moment before it disappears. Katara raises a hand and flicks her wrist, drawing some of the water from the pond. A small stream rises and twirls in the air, and Zuko follows her lead, using his middle and index fingers to make sparks flicker around the water she bends. When they finally stop, all that's left is vapor.

"I keep having bad dreams," she admits. She's talking into the silence and even though she knows he heard her loud and clear, she hopes that Zuko won't respond. She hopes there won't be any confrontation, no acknowledgement, and they'll keep on living in silence until she leaves for the Southern Water Tribe.

Katara isn't so lucky.

"I have nightmares too," is Zuko's response. Katara looks at him, stunned, at how much he's opening up to her now, at how honest and vulnerable he's allowing himself to be and it drives her into silence for a moment. He looks at her too and refuses to break her gaze with his own intense eyes and it's all Katara can do to keep from crying right there, from all the emotional stress and trauma she's suffered, from all the hurt she's been trying to hide. There's something unspoken between them, telling them that they should be showing some sort of affection like any normal friends would, and hug, and console each other until they feel better, but neither bender initiates it. Katara fills the space with her words instead.

"What do you dream about?" she asks. It doesn't go unnoticed that he tenses up in response.

"A lot of things," he says.

"I see you haven't lost your pensive ambiguity."

Zuko looks up in a way that looks almost bashful to Katara before he talks again.

"Sometimes I dream about you," he admits. She hates the fact that her cheeks feel hot in response to this. "I keep wondering what would've happened if I hadn't been fast enough to stop the lightning. What would I have said to the others? To your father? Your grandmother? Sokka? How would I have been able to live knowing that you got injured because of me? I've done a lot of terrible things Katara, but endangering you was inexcusable." He stares down at the pond as the turtleducks return, swimming slowly and quietly. Their tiny webbed feet splash the water and keep the air from being too silent.

"I have dreams about you too," she says.

"Am I still the face of the enemy?" Zuko asks. He means it as a joke, Katara knows, because he smirks, just a bit, and he doesn't turn away or get defensive or try to hide his scar. Still, Katara wants to deny it immediately.

"I keep wondering what I would've done if you didn't survive the Agni Kai," Katara mumbles. Her eyes burn at the thought of it and she struggles to push words past her tongue. Even with all the nightmares, even with all the time that has passed, her mouth still tastes like bile when she thinks of how close Zuko came to death. Her heart throbs against her rib cage thinking about it. "I was so worried about you, Zuko. I still am. I can't go home until I know you're okay."

"That might be soon," Zuko says. Katara's head snaps up and her eyes widen as he elaborates. "You've done so much already. There's not much more you can do for my wound, and it's not fair for me to keep you here away from your family." Katara cocks her head to the side as if she doesn't understand what he's saying.

"How soon is soon?" she asks. "How long have you been thinking about this?" She thinks of the days when he laid in bed, back turned towards her and refusing care and wonders if it was then, he thought to himself, that he would send Katara back to her tribe as soon as he could. She knows nothing about Zuko's decision is malicious, but her eyes burn again already.

"Maybe in another week or two," Zuko says in response to her question. "I appreciate all you've done Katara, I really do. And I'm not trying to make you feel like you're intruding, or you've overstayed your welcome, or anything like that. I just can't ask you to put your life on hold when we both know I'm never going to be exactly like I was before." Katara cringes at that, thinking of how now, Zuko will be permanently altered because of her. How he will forever have to explain the wound on his chest, the twitching of his muscles, the disruptive nightmares, all because she came into his life like a monsoon and washed what little hope for stability he had left.

"What if we did do it?" Katara asks. "What if I stayed here forever? We could have our talks every day. I'd come banging on your door and you'd roll your eyes and tell me to let myself in, and I'd sit right on your bed and it'd be just like that all the time. Like one big camping trip every day." She waves her hands around lazily to make a tiny whirlpool in the turtleduck pond. Zuko smiles and plays along with her story.

"And you'd say 'how was your day _my Lord_?' and bow your head the way you've seen servants do it," he says, scrunching up his nose to hide a laugh.

"And then I'd complain about all the Fire Nation foods," Katara adds. "And you'd defend all the things your cooks make for us. Even though we both know I could make something better if you'd just let me into the kitchen for once."

"They make good food!" Zuko argues. "Besides, you're my guest. You're not cooking for me."

"And after I cook for you," Katara says, smiling when Zuko crosses his arms at her blatant disregard for his statement, "I'd tell you some of the stories that my Gran Gran used to tell me and Sokka growing up, and you'd tell me some of your uncle's jokes."

"And you'd tell me another story about things you and Sokka used to do growing up," Zuko says. "And I'd think to myself that maybe I missed out on something because Azula and I don't have that relationship. But then I'd realize I have something she doesn't have."

"And what's that?"

"You."

Katara doesn't know why she does it, but she rests her head on Zuko's shoulder and closes her eyes, trying to visualize everything they'd said. She can see it. She can see herself staying here, if for nothing else, to spend time with Zuko and forget about the existence of the rest of the world. To forget her responsibilities and the post traumatic stress for a while. There's a part of her, buried far beneath logic and reason, that wishes it could somehow come true. That the world could be perfect and they wouldn't have to part, or at the very least, not so prematurely. Katara doesn't ask, but she feels the way the tension in Zuko's arm disappears in the moments after she lays her head on him. He reciprocates, letting his head rest against hers as well, and she thinks that maybe, he wasn't just trying to humor her. Maybe he wishes the same thing too.

They sit like that for another thirty minutes, and listen to the turtleducks sing.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** *slams fist on table* it's about time i give more introspection into zuko's thoughts dammit! anyways zuko is the poster child for cognitive dissonance and it's high time i dive into that. also, i kept changing this chapter because i have so many other scenes written for the story i just don't know what order to put them in BUT i had a breakthrough while writing this chapter so that's exciting (also pls keep reviewing i love attention i can't believe 50+ people follow this story wow omg)

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Zuko visits Azula for the first time, a few days before he and Katara sit together at the turtleduck pond. She's kept not too far from the palace, in a small hut that once housed a dozen or so servants some odd years ago. He knows that in her right state of mind, Azula would recognize where she is and she'd come storming down to the palace to find him. It's faith that allows him to keep her here, though whether it's faith that she's still too unstable to recognize the land she grew up on, or that she wouldn't outright attack him again, he doesn't know.

Zuko's also not sure what he expects when he gets to the hut. The outer perimeter is laden with guards, marching in pairs to make sure no one gets in (and more realistically, to make sure a certain someone doesn't get _out_ ). When he enters, he's led by one of the caretakers he tasked with looking after his sister. He doesn't remember this specific woman's name. Jie? Jing? Ju? There's far too many people on his staff for him to have memorized every name already.

Regardless, the unnamed nurse eagerly explains all the progress Azula has made in such a short space of time and Zuko listens vaguely, to all the herbs and teas Azula has been made to consume to make her more at peace, to all the socialization they've been requiring of her to help her relate to others. It's not a far walk to the room Azula is kept in, but Zuko finds himself so deep in thought that it feels like centuries before he reaches his sister.

Briefly, he imagines Mai, rolling her eyes and berating him for ever wanting to see Azula. _She's crazy Zuko. She almost killed the two of us. Why on Earth would you want to go see_ _her_? He wouldn't have an answer. He knows he shouldn't be keeping secrets. The potential for this to all go horrendously sour if Mai ever discovers that he's seeing Azula is too high for Zuko's liking. He knows Mai is trying her hardest to understand all that he is, all that he wants, and all that he needs, but she doesn't. She doesn't see his vision for their nation, she doesn't understand his connection with Katara and the others, and he knows in his heart that she wouldn't understand this.

He considered asking Katara for her opinion days ago, and he imagines, in that perfect world where she creeps into his room at all hours and he's free to be himself, that he'd bring up the idea of visiting Azula and Katara would offer him some support. _She's your sister, Zuko,_ Katara would say. _No one expects you to hate her._

Except, _everyone_ expects him to hate her, and he knows he should, but he can't bring himself to.

In any event, he can never find the strength to ask Katara what he should do, so instead, he chases the waterbender out of his room and makes their interactions shorter. The less time he spends with Katara, the less likely he'll be to give into his silly, selfish wants...

And yet, here he is now, only seconds from seeing his sister.

"Your brother is here to see you, Princess," the nurse says softly. Zuko isn't sure when they reach his sister's new room. His thoughts had him thoroughly preoccupied and he's been mindlessly moving, only to find himself in an almost barren room with a woman he barely knows and a girl he should know much better than he feels he ever will.

It occurs to Zuko how little he thought this through when the nurse approaches Azula, who is currently lying in a small bed on the far side of the room. It definitely doesn't hold a candle to her old room in the palace, not at all. This room is a perfect square. Her bed is attached to the wall opposite the doorway. There's a large window to the left, a rectangular table on the right. Zuko doesn't budge from the door. The nurse enters the room by herself, quietly addressing the younger girl as not to startle her.

Azula, for some eerie reason, does not stir.

From the moment they reach the room, Zuko tries to take notice of everything about his sister. Her face seems fuller, rounder, as though it lost some of the sharpness to it. Still, the circles under her eyes seem to have swollen, permanently darkening the crevices on either side of her nose. Her hair has been cut, almost as short as Suki's. Weeks ago, Azula's hair was down her back and now it just barely brushes her shoulders. Half of it is pulled up in a small bun with a gold ribbon while the rest hangs evenly by her face. He remembers the Agni Kai when Azula's hair was jagged and cut at all sorts of angles. She looks much less unkempt now than she did before. Different. He can't decide if he's okay with how much things have changed.

Azula continues to lie on the bed, eyes half open until she recognizes Zuko's face. She looks away immediately and it almost seems ridiculous to Zuko when she flinches in surprise. All at once, she seems to panic; she gasps loudly and shuts her eyes so tightly he thinks she might burst into tears at any second.

"I don't understand," Azula says. Her eyes shift from Zuko to her caretaker and she looks scared. Betrayed. She swallows hard and her voice matches the emotion in her golden eyes. "You told me I would stop seeing things. You lied to me!"

"Is she alright?" Zuko asks. He takes a step forward but the nurse quickly whips her head around and throws her hand out protectively.

"Princess Azula has never had visitors since she's been under our care," the nurse says. "Sometimes she struggles with understanding reality; she has very bad delusions and she can't always tell when she's hallucinating or not. She's been much less violent but I fear that she may be having an episode right now."

"Because I'm here?" Zuko asks. The nurse ignores him. Despite Azula's sudden outburst, and the nurse's prompting, Zuko doesn't falter. He came all the way to see his sister. He'd be damned to have to back off so easily.

"Don't be like this, Princess," the nurse says, kneeling before Azula. There's something oddly motherly about the nurse and Zuko wonders if she fears for her safety, on her knees beside the bed of his unstable sister. The nurse never flinches, never hesitates, and he wonders how long it took for her to establish this relationship with his sister, if every day the nurse can speak to Azula without fear or if she has to push her cowardice behind a smile and a lie.

Azula still doesn't budge or even bother to offer a look in Zuko's direction.

"This isn't real," Azula says. She's frowning and beginning to cry, despite the nurse's attempts at calming her. Azula's eyes close and open several times as she stares at her older brother, as if she expects that she'll eventually open her eyes and find that he was never there at all.

"You're safe, Princess," the nurse promises, but Azula is already spiraling too far and too quickly for words alone to pull her back to the present moment.

"It won't disappear!" Azula screams, and for the first time in fourteen years, Zuko sees his sister, scared, hurt, and vulnerable.

"This is real, Princess," the nurse coos, but Azula is already desperate to make her thoughts quiet down. She sits up quickly, her eyes frantically wavering as she makes eye contact with her brother before she finally loses what little control the nurse swore she had and she begins to scream out at her brother.

"Leave me alone!" Azula yells. "You're not real!" She doesn't hesitate; she throws her arms out and the nurse ducks her head immediately, as if this has happened enough times for her to know how to act in this situation. Blue flames lick at Zuko's hands when he moves to defend himself. Azula clutches her head in her shaky hands and the nurse immediately holds Azula's wrists, rubbing soothing circles with her thumbs.

"I'm sorry, Fire Lord Zuko," the nurse says, sparing him a quick glance as she continues to comfort the now crying Azula, who continues to shake and sob on her bed. Zuko doesn't have to be told to leave. He gives the nurse an apologetic look, for asking her to care for his sister, for causing so much turmoil and commotion in such a short space of time. He's sorry for it all, but he leaves all the same, knowing that there's no way for him to fix this kind of damage.

He thinks of the sound of Azula's cries the entire walk back to the palace.

.

.

.

 _"What did you do to that man?" Zuko asks. It's been silent between them since he suggested they stop for the night before continuing their search for Yon Rha in the morning. According to Zuko's calculations, they're going to arrive in Yon Rha's village the next day. In his humble opinion, there's no need to go from the ship they'd just ambushed an hour ago straight to Yon Rha. They'd have more than enough time to confront him once they rested for the night._

 _There's a small fire in between them. Appa is sleeping off to the side, his snores as gentle as the summer breeze. Katara stares at Zuko, and he wants to ask if she's okay, but he still doesn't know if it's his place to. Her eyes are tired, dark circles hang beneath them. He can't tell if she's angry, or confused, or if the glare from the campfire is just painting intimidating shadows on her face. When he's certain she won't respond without further prompting, Zuko elaborates. "On the ship. You were... Controlling him somehow."_

 _After a long while, she replies, "It's called bloodbending."_

 _"I see," Zuko says, nodding his head. The fire crackles softly in front of them. "And this is something you've always been able to do?"_

 _"No," she says. "Well, I guess I always_ could _have, but... I only recently learned how to do it." For no real reason she adds, "I can only do it under a full moon." Zuko's gaze shifts to the sky and he stares a the moon, still full and glowing amongst the glittering stars. He looks at Katara and for a moment he thinks they have the same thought, that if she really wants to, she could end him right there. She has all the information she needs to get to Yon Rha without him. Zuko's worthless to her, nothing but dead weight, and all it would take was a flick of the wrist for her to bring him to his knees._

 _Still, he doesn't flinch. He doesn't back away, or beg her not to hurt him. It's in that moment that Katara realizes that Zuko's already accomplished something that she's still struggling with; he trusts her. He has no reason or right to, but he trusts her, and Katara doesn't know what to do about it._

 _"We should go to sleep," she says finally. She stands up to go fetch their blankets, and Zuko wonders to himself if Katara will be this forgiving when they finally find Yon Rha._

.

.

.

"You're burned," Mai says as she holds Zuko's hand in hers. It's not often that Zuko spends time with her alone, which he realizes is very odd considering that she _is_ his girlfriend. It's even odder when he thinks about all the time he's spent alone with Katara, and he has found yet another reason to shorten the amount of time he spends with the Water Tribe girl. Now that he's visited Azula, he's noticed his nightmares have become worse. He thinks of what Azula would do if she ever did find her way out of the hut and back to the palace to see Katara and Mai taking up residence in her former home. The thought alone is enough to keep him on edge.

The couple is sitting in the courtyard when Mai makes the observation. Zuko suggested they walk around the palace grounds together, if for no other reason than to just be alone for a while. Mai agreed, as happily as her demeanor would allow, and they walked side by side all around the palace talking and passing the time before stopping in the courtyard to sit and enjoy the setting sun.

It's nice. Zuko isn't nearly as present as he should be in the conversation, constantly indulging in thoughts of his sister, of what she could possibly be doing right now, of the nurses currently risking their own wellbeing to look after her. He nearly misses Mai's statement until his mind replays the night before when his sister aimed at him and he wasn't quick enough to properly defend himself. He knew he'd been burned. He felt the all too familiar singe of fire on his skin at the time, but his adrenaline and fear had numbed it and blocked the moment from his memory until Mai made it resurface.

"Must be from sparring," he replies, too quickly to sound really believable. Mai quirks an eyebrow.

"How do you get burned and not even know it?" Mai asks. "Leave it to you, Zuko." He nearly gets defensive until he notices Mai's smile and he realizes she's teasing him. He's just being paranoid and reading her body language all wrong as usual. He lets the tension in his body go.

"Yeah," he chuckles, stiffly. Awkwardly. "Leave it to me." Mai doesn't have an immediate reply and he thinks that's the end of it. The conversation will be dropped and he won't have to lie anymore. He doesn't want to lie to her ever again.

"Katara can heal it, can't she?" Mai finally asks.

"She could," Zuko says. He doesn't mind though. He's suffered much worse burns, on his face and chest during battles, that he doesn't really care about the minor burn on his hands. Still, he doesn't think it's worth arguing about, and so he decides that, so long as his memory serves him, he'll ask Katara to heal him.

Zuko pauses for a moment as he considers the extent of Katara's healing ability, and thinks of Azula. "Do you think Katara could heal things that aren't physical?" he asks. It's a weird question, a longshot, and he knows there's no point in asking. He'll never be able to explain what he's truly thinking.

Mai looks at Zuko quizzically. "Like what?"

Zuko sighs. "I don't know... Never mind. I was just thinking out loud." Mai rolls her eyes, her lips still turned up in a small smile as she gives Zuko's hand a tight squeeze. He tries to find the gesture soothing. It's something sweet and innocent to comfort him in the subtle way Mai prefers to show her affection. He should feel better. He knows he should, but he can't. He's thinking of all the things he feels unable to say, all the things he's hiding from Mai. When she squeezes his hand, he's briefly reminded of the knives hiding under her sleeve.

When he feels enough time has passed, he pulls his hand away.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** you may be wondering why this story is called 'the bottom of a swimming pool' and for that, i have two answers: the first is that i'm making this up as i go along and i just thought it was a cool lyric from young god by halsey and the second is that i'm lying and i actually have a reason and i'm working on getting to that point in the story

as always, read, review, show this fic to your friends and neighbors, and you can message me on tumblr (thinqng) if you really want to idk

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"Were you even listening to me?"

Zuko snaps his head up in response to what he knows is a loaded question. Mai stands before him in his chamber, her pale hands on her narrow hips and she's frowning, in irritation and disapproval, as Zuko scrambles to find some sort of response. It's not the first time she's caught him wandering mid-conversation. To be fair, he's got a lot on his mind. He's never really been one to talk unnecessarily in the first place, and with everything on his plate, he's had a lot to think about.

First of all, there's Katara. Her departure from the Fire Nation is set for ten days away, and as much as he insists (and believes) that she needs to return home so that she can begin to move on after the war, he's already starting to preemptively miss her. He thinks that spending even less time with her might make the break cleaner, but that only really makes him wonder what Katara's up to when she's not with him. After all, Iroh is really the only other person she has to interact with, and there's only so many games of Pai Sho the two can play before Katara gets tired of it. Spending more time with her doesn't seem like it'll solve much either, because then he'll have to get used to the gap in his day when she's gone.

He'd much rather brood about his feelings in silence than talk about them with anyone.

Secondly, there's Azula. She's always been in the forefront of Zuko's mind, especially since he saw her the other day. Part of him wants to convince himself that his visit was proof that there's no hope for Azula. The war broke her in ways he is unfit to repair, and he should take this as a sign that he should cut all ties with her. He's done more than he had to by keeping her in a ward where she more or less has her freedom. She's never chained up or restrained. Her caretakers regard her with respect and kindness. He could've just as easily thrown her in prison to be mistreated like he said he would (but silently backed out of last minute. It's out of what he thinks is pity, but might actually be love.) He has no obligation to speak to her or even see her ever again, but he still craves the hypothetical day when he and his sister can have some sort of civil bond, and he wants to go back to see her. The only questions are when, and why.

And of course, there are his duties as Fire Lord. Zuko is a good leader, far better than Ozai would've ever led him to believe, and while he doesn't have years of experience, he has genuineness, and that's enough to get him by for now. So far he's been signing treaties, meeting with other world leaders, making the appropriate reparations for the war as he sees fit and plausible. Zuko knows enough about politics to market his actions in a way that most Fire Nation citizens can more or less be content with. ' _The Hundred Year War only brought casualties and devastation; if we are to share our greatness with the world, we must do so in a way that doesn't endanger lives._ ' He knows the entire nation isn't one hundred percent on board with him just yet. Mai's offhanded comments about his decisions are proof of that. The way his servants treat Katara despite him telling them to respect her only furthers this. But, he thinks that in time, he might be able to change the minds of his nation, maybe.

This kind of ambition, however, has a heavy cognitive load, and is one of many reasons why, when Mai starts speaking, Zuko sometimes tunes her out.

The fact that Mai is even pestering him right now is frustrating, because Zuko has made it clear on _more than one occasion_ that he's not doing this to bother her, it's just _difficult_ to keep all his thoughts separate and quiet and organized, especially when she's talking _at_ him, but if he wants to avoid a fight (and her prying) he'll have to bite his tongue.

"Well Zuko?" Mai prompts when her boyfriend doesn't speak.

"I—Of course I was listening," Zuko says, in a voice that doesn't even convince himself. He clears his throat in indignation, trying to keep himself from stumbling over the words spilling from his tongue. "What would make you think I wasn't?"

"What was the last thing I said?" Mai asks. Her hands leave her hips so that she can cross her arms, her eyes narrowing as she does.

"You asked if I was listening." He doesn't give her the chance to yell at him. Instead, he walks over to Mai and kisses her softly and quickly, though she doesn't return the affection or uncross her arms. She doesn't even bother to look at him when she continues to glare. "I'm sorry," Zuko says.

"I know."

"I just have a lot on my mind—"

"I know."

"—With all the meetings I still have today and—"

"I _know_ , Zuko." Mai takes a deep, loud breath. Zuko stares at her in defeat. He knows that this is what their dynamic is, and that the good times between them will return, once they get used to one another again. It's saddening that they have to go through this, but he knows once it's good again, it'll be worth it, they just have to wait it out like they always do...

Zuko looks at the floor, then back at Mai.

"I have to go to another meeting right now," he says quietly.

"Of course you do," Mai replies. It's silent and for once, Zuko despises it, because in the silence his thoughts run rampant and he can feel all the issues between them threatening to bubble up and drown them both. Mai starts to leave without speaking, and Zuko wants to stop her; he wants to apologize again but he doesn't know what to say without sounding redundant.

"I'll do better," is what he says, in a voice that doesn't even convince himself.

.

.

.

"So I have this theory," Katara says, as she kneels by the turtleduck pond with Zuko. Her small hands are glowing blue as she encases the burned flesh of his palm in water, attempting to heal the injury he acquired from Azula. She long since lectured him about it; ' _Be more careful', 'Why didn't you let me heal this sooner?'_ and a barrage of other things that only served to make him laugh at her concern. She's just so _motherly_ and endearing, and he knows how much he'll miss her presence when she's gone.

The sun is setting and the sky is a pretty orange but as always, Zuko is distracted because in the back of his mind he knows ten days until Katara's departure is quickly becoming nine, and it'll only be a matter of time before she leaves for the South Pole. He tries not to think about it too much, because he knows that he's wasting what little time he has left with her, but he can't help himself. He hates that this is going to end.

"Tell me your theory," he says, hoping that if he focuses on her words he can get lost in them. Katara smiles, and Zuko notices that her hands are still encased around his and he wonders how long they've been like that. Surely there's only so much healing she can do for an old burn, but the act itself is comforting enough that he doesn't question it aloud.

"What if everyone has a past life?" Katara asks. The turtleducks are swimming in tiny circles and quacking quietly, a tiny symphony as she speaks.

"You mean like the avatar?"

"Yes, but not just the avatar..." Katara looks puzzled and Zuko finds this endearing as well, watching her struggle to find the right words to get her thoughts out. "What if we're all being reincarnated but we just can't access our past lives?" He notices her staring at him, hopefully, as if she expects him to have some profound answer, but he doesn't. He looks at the turtleducks chasing one another in the pond. His eyes flicker up at the orange sky. A year ago, he barely thought he had a place in the universe. How Katara expects him to know if this is or isn't his first life, is beyond him.

"Never really thought about it," Zuko admits. The duo let the turtleducks take the reigns by singing in their silence until Zuko speaks again. "What made you think of this?"

"Us," Katara says. Zuko's brows furrow, but Katara continues without prompting. "When we were little, my mother used to tell Sokka and I why the stars were in the sky."

"To light the way of weary travelers?" Zuko offers.

"Not just that," Katara says. "My mother told us that the stars were living beings, put in the sky by fate to follow a certain path, no matter how twisted and convoluted it may seem." Zuko quirks an eyebrow.

"And how does this relate to us?"

Katara finally removes her hands from Zuko, returning the water she used to heal him back to the pond. The turtleducks squeak in surprise.

"I think it's fate that we found each other," she says. Her eyes are fixed on the turtleducks and Zuko can't quite read her expression, not when her hair is hiding her face. "If anyone told me that we'd be friends, after how we met, after all we'd been through, I would've never believed them. But I think we were supposed to find each other."

"And what does this have to do with past lives?"

"The avatar's destiny is laid out for them long before they're born," Katara explains. "Who they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to do; they always find their way in every reincarnation. And maybe we're all like that. We might not have our past lives to guide us, but we have our fate laid out... The people we're supposed to meet and care about aren't random. We just have to find our way to where we belong." There's a pause while Katara's words sink in and Zuko smiles. He likes her theory, her optimism, her unashamed hope that their unorthodox friendship was meant to be, and not just some odd anomaly of the universe. She honestly believes that they were meant to be a part of each other's lives, and it makes Zuko feel undeniably warm to think about.

"Maybe," Zuko begins, trying to hide his smile. "Even in times like these, born on opposite sides of war, we were always supposed to find our way back to each other."

Katara's smile starts off small, before encapsulating her entire face, and for that fleeting moment in time, when the sun finally dips beyond the horizon and the sky turns navy, Zuko forgets that ten days until Katara's departure will soon become nine.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** took some time off from writing because school and real life have been stressing me out but i'm back and ready to party. i think the chapters are gonna be longer now?¿ idk. i'm clearly making this up as i go along lol

buuuut anyway, thanks to all of you who read and enjoy this story! it warms my heart :') i appreciate all the follows, faves and reviews so much xx

* * *

Zuko wonders, during his second trip to see his sister, if he would've felt more comfortable with Katara by his side, just as he did during the Agni Kai. He considered asking her when they were sitting at the turtleduck pond, but the image of Azula aiming at Katara replayed in his mind like an echo, and so he never let the thought form into words.

Now, he's not sure whether this is a good idea. Azula's being much more agreeable this time around, and though she's not speaking, she's not trying to attack him, and he thinks these few moments of silence might be the most peaceful interaction they've ever had.

There's something eerie and unsettling about this though. The all white room she now resides in makes him nauseous, the stiff wooden chairs they sit on make him feel more uncomfortable no matter how he fidgets around in his seat or grips the table between them to calm his tense body. He thinks of something else, something glaringly obvious that makes his heart hurt, that after all these years, after growing up just a room away from Azula as a child, that he has no idea what to say to her. He doesn't have an idea what common interests they share, how to be civil with her in a way that isn't completely cliché or childish, and he thinks that they may never actually achieve anything more than uncomfortable quietness.

He considers this both a victory and a loss.

He tries to read Azula, but even in here, with her questionable state of being, with her wild eyes and unnerving silence, she still doesn't allow a moment of transparency. Zuko knows he should say something, that he shouldn't let this trip be for naught. He opens his mouth when he thinks of small talk, but decides against every overused line. If he's going to speak to Azula, he wants it to be genuine, and not some rehearsed social starter to force her into talking.

"You look more and more like our mother every time I see you," Zuko finally says. Azula flinches slightly, but still, it's a reaction, and Zuko is glad he said what he said. She stares at her older brother and eyes him and he wonders how she's interpreting this; he wonders if Azula considers this to be a grave insult or a sarcastic quip, something negative, when in all honesty, he meant it. He sees it in her eyes, in her smile, the structure of her face. He wonders if there will come a day when he won't be able to recognize his mother's face because Azula's will have developed so much that the two will blend into one image in his mind.

Azula sits upright, her chair scrapes the hard floor when she scooches closer to the table. She puts her left hand up to her face, covering the respective area where Zuko's scar would lay if it had been on her skin. Eventually, she lets her hand drop before she leans forward, and though everything Zuko knows about his sister tells him to pull back, he doesn't. He lets her place her palm over his burn mark. He thinks of all the possible ways this could go wrong, how she could lash out and burn him again just like Ozai had, how easily she could ignite his already damaged flesh. She has all the power in the world to hurt him and he willingly resigned it to her.

"I always thought you looked like our father," Azula replies. She smiles at her fingers that are splayed across Zuko's skin. "I wonder if you'll ever become the man that he is."

Zuko seethes at her words and her smile grows because they both know that, though there was no competition between them, somehow she's found a way to win. When Zuko leaves for the night, he'll be thinking of all the different ways she could've meant that and even though Azula will be physically bound to the hut where she now spends all of her days, it is Zuko who will truly be prisoner to the words of his dotty sister.

With all the power in the world to hurt him, Azula, as always, manages to find the thing that will pain Zuko the most.

.

.

.

"Charming," Zuko mutters aloud. He's in Katara's room when he remembers the word and she stares at him with a puzzled expression on her face. He's not really helping her pack, but he's being present, (which is all Katara can really ask for at this point), listening to her tell him more stories she'd heard growing up in the Water Tribe. He never really thought about how different the nations were, growing up as a sheltered child in the Fire Nation until he was exiled, and even then, he only barely familiarized himself with things of the Earth Kingdom. When Katara speaks, he hopes that somehow he'll find a way to commit every word to memory so that he will be able to replay them when she's gone.

 _When she's gone_. Something about that phrase makes him feel vacant.

But her words, the emotions in her voice, the way she stops folding her tunics to use her hands to emphasize things and the light in her cobalt eyes… He's going to miss this in the same way he misses Sokka's jokes and Suki's wit, Toph's demeanor and Aang's optimism, but… This is different. He's going to miss Katara in a different way than he misses his other friends. He'll miss Katara the way rain misses the clouds when it falls from the sky.

"What?" she asks, stopping mid-sentence to peek at him curiously. He remembers then that he was trying to remember what word he'd use to describe her: charming. He feels bashful, his cheeks are hot and it's truly not that big a deal that he was thinking out loud, especially not in front of Katara of all people. He knows she won't poke fun at him but he can't help but feel a bit silly.

"It's nothing," he says. He doesn't know how to explain that he was thinking of her so fondly, that he was listening to her tell stories and build fantasy lands with words and he was entranced by it all, by her passion and vigor and emotional liberty. He wonders what it'd be like if Mai were more open like this, and he feels guilty despite knowing that this thought will never be spoken.

"Always so secretive," Katara says, and her tiny smile only reinstates what Zuko already knows. Katara is charming and pleasant and kind, and Zuko can only imagine how difficult it will be to fill the space once she is gone.

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _"Oh, everyone 'trusts' you now?" Katara shouts, and Zuko knows he's been in this situation before. The moon is glowing and the air is cold, exceptionally so for the summertime, but all he can focus on is the irate tone of her voice. He stares at her, at her dark brown hair waving in the breeze and she continues to scream words at him that he's certain he's heard already. They sting in an all too familiar way. Regardless, he's silenced by her rage. He's seen her angry; he's heard her yell and reprimand him, but he's never seen her quite like this. His blood ripples through him with shame._

 _"I was the first person to trust you, remember? Back in Ba Sing Se!" Katara seethes. Zuko wants so desperately to defend himself, but there's no deflecting the truth. She's not generalizing or exaggerating, or even trying to belittle him. She's reminding him of who he is, and he has no response for this._

 _She walks up to him, dangerously close, and his heart pounds so loudly that he doesn't hear what she says next. All he knows is blue; the blue of her eyes, the blue of her tunic, and everything else gets lost in a flurry of sensory overload. Her words are static noise, he can't process her expression quick enough, and all at once, she's gone, bumping past him with her shoulder as aggressively as she can._

 _"Katara wait! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" He knows this is futile. His words are flimsy and mean nothing in comparison to his actions but he still desperately wants her forgiveness. Zuko turns to grab her by the wrist but when she turns around, it's not Katara's face he sees. He can't believe his eyes for a moment. He steps back, blinking stupidly at what he sees._

 _It's Ursa._

 _He knows her eyes and smile anywhere, even here, in this isolated region of the Fire Nation, under a starry sky, after all these years. His thoughts are all too fast and contradictory that he can't possibly act on any of them. He wants to hug her and talk to her and ask her where she's been but he's frozen. All he can do is stare at the woman in front of him._ _He tries to run to her but his feet won't budge. He wants to shout to her but the only words that leave his mouth are apologies._

 _"I'm sorry!" he screams, though for what, he's not sure. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" He doesn't know if there's anything else to say. He doesn't know if there's anything else he_ can _say._

 _"Oh Zuko," Ursa says, but she sounds distorted, far away, like her voice isn't hers. She smiles softly just like Zuko remembers seeing when he was a boy, but just as quickly, her smile melts into a scowl. "It's just who you are. Someone who turned around and betrayed me! Betrayed everyone!" Zuko doesn't know what to say. These words are familiar too but... They don't belong to his mother, do they?_

 _Goosebumps rise on his skin and something is crawling, itching,_ _burning_ _his body. He doesn't understand what's happening, why he can't move or form intelligible sentences or why everything feels so eerily familiar. Ursa pulls up her hood the way she did the last time Zuko saw her, and suddenly he realizes they're not alone. He can see his uncle, in tattered prison clothes, refusing to look at him, Aang in singed robes, eyes glowing and body twitching from the lightning Azula struck him with in Ba Sing Se, Mai, frowning and staring at the ground while guards from the Boiling Rock pin her arms behind her, Azula, crying and hysterical with her hands chained behind her and finally Katara, her wavy hair on either side of her shoulders, while crystal colored tears stream down her cheeks._

 _"I'm sorry," he pleads. He falls to his knees as everyone draws closer to him. "I'm sorry!" Zuko says again. "Please! I'm sorry!"_

 _Katara steps forward and he stares up at her, at the stream of water she's bending around herself. Slowly the stream starts getting closer and closer to Zuko, swirling around him and surrounding him until he realizes it's just him and Katara in a small dome of water._

 _"I know!" Katara says. Her words are shrill and manic. The smile she adopts seems fabricated. The water stops moving and Katara keeps her arms out and tensed, controlling every drop. "Why don't you reclaim Ba Sing Se in the name of the Earth King? Or, I know! You can bring my mother back!" Zuko knows he's not meant to respond, but his chest twinges with guilt all the same. Katara moves her arms gracefully around her, and the dome melts into one long stream until it divides into dozens of ice daggers headed straight for him._

"Fire Lord Zuko?"

Zuko blinks a few times and realizes the ragged panting he hears is coming from his own, half opened mouth. It takes him a moment to fully understand what's happening; he looks around and he's surrounded by a dozen men in red robes, and his uncle, directly to the right of him.

His council. He realizes he's in a council meeting and his mind was wandering.

Zuko swears under his breath.

"We need your decision on what to do about the Fire Nation military presence in the Earth Kingdom." Zuko isn't sure which of his men says it. They all look the same to him if he's being honest, all except Iroh, and his mind feels groggy and slow and unable to keep up with everything going on around them.

"I-I'm sorry," he stutters out quickly. He's had lots of nightmares before, but he's never had anything of that nature happen while he was _awake_ (although, the longer he thinks about it, the more certain he is that this qualifies as hallucinating, but he doesn't want to think about that for too long). Zuko sits up straight, pushes his shoulders back, and tries to at least look the part of a leader, even if it's clear his head's not in it at all.

"Are you alright, Fire Lord Zuko?" Iroh asks. Zuko wants to lash out instinctively. _Of course I'm fine Uncle! I just need a second to think!_ He manages to keep his anger under control enough to focus on the task at hand: answering his council. He racks his brain as quickly as he can to pull up the last things he remembers hearing before he was sidetracked. _Fire Nation, military presence, Ba Sing Se…_ but what else? He holds the bridge of his nose in his thumb and forefinger and realizes that the skin is wet to the touch. But from what? Sweat? _Tears_? Had he started _crying_ and not even realized it?

"Nephew," Iroh prompts again, more sternly but Zuko doesn't reply. He wants nothing more than to disappear, to lock himself in his chamber until the shame and embarrassment from this moment suffocate him to death so he won't ever have to acknowledge it, but he knows that won't happen. He has to be composed, if for nothing else, his nation.

"We will meet tomorrow to discuss this further," Zuko says, trying not to let his voice shake as much as the rest of his body does. "The meeting is adjourned for today." The men of his council all stare silently at him, but refuse to move, and this only makes Zuko more frustrated.

"But Fire Lord Zuko," one of the councilmen begins. "We really should be coming to a decision on this matter and—"

"I _said_ , we will discuss this further tomorrow when I have time to come to a decision," Zuko folds his hands in front of him, stares straight ahead as not to glare down at any man in particular. "You are dismissed."

The councilmen file out of the room, all except for Iroh, who stays behind with his nephew and sits with him in silence.

"I was worried this would happen," Iroh says once the quietness between them becomes unbearable. "You're not getting better, are you, Zuko?"

"I'm fine, Uncle," Zuko says, though he keeps staring forward, emotionless.

"I know you're recovering from being at war, Zuko," Iroh says. "But I'm asking you to be honest. You are not getting better, are you?"

"What else can I do, Uncle?" Zuko asks. "I'm better now. My scar is fine. I regained most of my motor control. I can't just sit around healing all day. I have to move on." He wonders if his voice sounds as hoarse and desperate as he imagines it does. Zuko thinks back to the moments he spent the day before in Katara's chamber, watching her pack, and realizing how real it was that she'd be gone by the following week. He thinks of the star shaped scar on his chest and how now it is healed, how his muscle control has improved greatly, how thankful he should be, and _is,_ that Katara came to his country to make sure he was alright.

"Oh Zuko," Iroh shakes his head as he speaks. "The only thing you _can_ do now is heal." Zuko's jaw tenses, his eyes burn indignantly and he knows it'd be just as easy to storm off and head to his chamber the way he would've a year ago when he didn't get his way. He wants to pretend he doesn't understand. He wants to act like all his scars are physical and that he can claim that he is well now, but he can't. He's aching on the inside and nothing, no teas, no herbs, no amount of Katara's healing can fix the internal damage he's accrued throughout the years. Instead, he lowers his head and shuts his eyes, unsure if the tears he feels welling up are making it past his eyelids.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** tbh if i ever say i'm gonna update consistently you shouldn't believe me but i love all the reviews and positivity you guys send me :) (p.s i don't actually remember if the series ever explains how to play pai sho but let's assume for the purpose of this chapter it's like chinese checkers cuz that's one of the games the avatar wiki said it's based on)

* * *

The list of things that Katara will miss when she leaves the Fire Nation is incredibly limited. She thinks of the turtleduck pond, and it's inhabitants, and how she'll miss seeing them down in the South Pole. She thinks of Zuko and how now, she hears of him more than she sees him; how he rarely spends time in his chamber as he's always up and active and doing _something_ (though for the life of her, Katara can't figure out what 'something' is). He looks so, so much different to her in the few glimpses she catches of him, donned in robes and silks accented with gold, his eyes, more tired, more jaded. She wonders how different he'll look after she leaves, how long it'll be until she sees him again. (It's important to note that she does hope that, even though she's set to return home in a week, she'll have time to see Zuko again. Preferably outside of his forsaken nation.)

But one thing she thinks she'll miss more than she ever really anticipated are her games of Pai Sho with Iroh.

Now, she's in the garden with the retired general, in one of the gazebos amongst the fire lilies. They're not in season right now, not anymore. Katara knows from Hama that the lilies only live for a few weeks in the summer, but now, the young waterbender wonders if the flowers had only just started to wilt a few days ago, or if her own impending departure has made her more aware of everything's inherent temporariness.

"It is a shame you'll be leaving so soon," Iroh says, as if he can read her thoughts. He looks at the board between them, and Katara stares at him, at the kind, older man and how much she'll miss his gentle nature when she's back home. "I think if we had more time," Iroh continues, "You could become a real Pai Sho master."

"Thank you, Iroh," Katara says. She tops off her comment with a bright smile, though he doesn't notice it. His eyes are too fixated on the board between them.

"I imagine you must be very excited to finally go home though," he adds. "Have you heard from any of your family members since the war ended?" His fingers lightly brush the surface of several of his tiles, something Katara has seen him do many times before. ' _Pai Sho is a game of understanding. You must get a feel for everything before you make your move.'_ She wonders how much of the advice Iroh had given her on the game applies to real life too.

"Not as far as I know," Katara says, which admittedly, she's a little surprised by. Of course, she hadn't set out time to really write them either. It was just something that slipped her mind, but she imagines that maybe it would've helped her loneliness, (or perhaps it would've made it worse) had she have had letters from her family just to check in with her.

"That's peculiar," Iroh says. "Perhaps we can ask around to make sure. But in any event, you'll be home soon anyway, which I'm sure is far more exciting."

"I'm happy I'm going home," she says. "But..."

"Ah," Iroh nods his head and looks up at her for the first time. "I knew you seemed a little distracted." Katara sighs, uncharacteristically loud, and folds her hands on her lap. The look Iroh gives her is one meant to prompt her to continue, but she doesn't know where to begin.

"It's Zuko," Katara says finally. "I just feel like he still needs... _someone_. I know he has you and Mai, but that can't be all he has." Iroh nods again and Katara wonders if that's just a reflex for him, if he simply uses that motion as affirmation that he's processing the ideas or if he's actually agreeing with the things she says.

"Zuko has a lot of responsibility now as Fire Lord, getting the nation behind him, trying to repair a century of damage. He's been very frustrated lately." Iroh finally decides on a tile to move and makes his play before he begins to speak again. "You're right about him needing someone, someone who can provide things for him in ways that I cannot. I think you have done an excellent job of being there for him and have truly aided his healing. I know he struggles with the way he shows it, but he has truly appreciated your presence in these past weeks. " Katara smiles again, but this time it's meek and awkward.

"Shutting me out is a pretty unorthodox way of showing that," she says.

"My nephew can be very reclusive," Iroh admits.

"And stubborn," she adds. Iroh chuckles and Katara pauses, staring at the game board between them before she finally makes her move.

"Are you sure that's the move you'd like to make?" Iroh asks when he looks at the game pieces. He nods at the obvious opening in her defense, how blatantly she allowed one of her pieces be opened up to his benefit, but she doesn't change her mind. Katara nods her head and Iroh waits a moment before reciprocating the action, moving a tile forward to capture the piece she had just previously moved _._

"What if I didn't go back home just yet?" Katara muses, mostly to herself.

"As in, you would like to stay here? In the Fire Nation? For longer?"

"Yes," she says. "For Zuko." After too long of a pause, she adds, "For his wellbeing, of course." She reaches forward and moves another tile on the Pai Sho board, capturing the tile that Iroh had just used to take one of her pieces.

"Of course," Iroh says. "I know you have already given up a lot, for him, for his wellbeing. I do not doubt that you would give more either, though I wonder if you truly know what you'd be putting yourself through if you stayed here for longer." Katara tries to avoid his gaze, tries to ignore the thought of listening to Zuko's servants talk down to her, the thought of feeling outcasted for longer, missing her family until she finally breaks her protective attachment to Zuko enough to travel back to the South. Still, she's not sure any of this changes her decision. She's not sure if anything would.

"I'm staying," she says firmly, as if she has to say the words out loud to convince herself. "It doesn't matter what Zuko says either. I'm not asking him. I'm staying here until I know for sure he's going to be alright when I'm gone."

"You know," Iroh says before he reaches for another one of his tiles, "The interesting thing about self sacrifice is that it is always done with selfish intentions." He takes his tile and effortlessly skips across the board, over all of Katara's remaining tiles and effectively winning the game. Katara stares, eyebrows furrowed as she pieces together the move, how her poor calculation had led to such an abrupt victory for the older man.

"But how did you...?" Katara's voice trails off as she stares at the board, chin in her hands as she replays his moves over again in her head.

"When you hide your true intentions behind a false mask of sacrifice, you leave yourself most vulnerable to experiencing loss."

When he rests his tile down for good, Katara wonders how much of what Iroh said was meant to apply solely to the game.

 _._

 _._

 _._

"We've gone over this a dozen times already," Mai whines as Zuko continues reading one of the many scrolls laid out in front of him. He doesn't acknowledge her though, not really, beyond a small, unintelligent grunt to let her know that he is listening, at least a bit.

It's a little hard to focus right now, with Mai sitting on his bed, and Zuko on his floor, reviewing the many things his council requested he read when he cancelled their meeting the day before. He knows he's not going to retain most of it; he never does. Despite all his exposure to the political realm, some of the jargon still manages to go right over his head. He also knows that reading the same scriptures over and over won't help him come up with a solution, not with all the other things bogging down his mind. He's got so many things to focus on, reparations, peace treaties, Katara's departure that will only be in a matter of days...

The fact that the pain in his chest (coupled with his anxiety levels) is flaring up isn't helping things either.

"I have to meet with the council again in a few hours with a decision. Just run through it with me again," he says. He looks up at Mai, who is now crossing her arms and adds a sincere, "Please?"

She rolls her eyes, the way she always does before she gives in but for some reason, right now, it's not as charming as he normally finds it. He's not usually under this much pressure and even though he knows this is just Mai's personality, it's just in her nature to act this way, he wishes she could just assist him with this one _small_ task without seeming so bothered by it.

Still, she looks lovely sitting on his bed; the light hits her pale skin in a such a flattering way and her hair neatly pinned up and out of her face. No matter how upset he gets, he cannot deny what a beautiful girl she is.

"You cannot feasibly remove the Fire Nation military from Ba Sing Se regardless of the tension that's currently rising among the people," Mai says. She pauses. "And now matter how much _you_ want to." Zuko narrows his eyes. Mai holds her ground. "How will the Fire Nation pay for a mass relocation now that most of our sources of income no longer exist? Do you know how much it would realistically cost for us to bring _that_ many people from Ba Sing Se back here?"

Zuko glares for two reasons. He hates the thought of the war, what it did to so many people and how, for a century, his nation became so dependent on colonization and genocide that without it, their economy is facing faults. He also knows that Mai is not exactly happy to see their nation under financial strain now. He can tell from the tone of her voice that she's baiting him. One wrong diversion will lead him into another debate between the two of them about whether the war was justified and whether Zuko is actually keeping his country's best interests in the forefront of his actions. Everything about her body language is screaming for a fight, her eyes, her frown, her tense, folded arms, but he resists. With another meeting right around the corner, he can't afford to waste time.

"Ba Sing Se was our most recent conquest," Zuko argues. "At most, our people would've relocated there for a few months. And regardless of loss of revenue from former colonies, we still have the biggest manufacturing industry in the world. We can afford to bring our military home." At least, he assumes they can. He's been avoiding actually checking the math on that. He's got a million other things to do besides crunch numbers, but his logic seems sound enough without the empirical evidence.

"What about the families that relocated to Ba Sing Se to be with the soldiers in war?" Mai asks. "Omashu was conquered less than a year ago and we have plenty of our people there. Are you just going to force people to leave the lives they created there as well? Isn't the land as much ours now as it is theirs?"

"It's not," Zuko says. "Not at all. Not even a little bit." The air is hot and still and quiet, _so_ uncomfortably quiet that Zuko wishes he hadn't even started this conversation with Mai because, yet again, all it's led to is pointless arguing. He should feel worse for how frustrated he is, and has been, with Mai. He wants to feel bad, he wants to feel apologetic. He wants to look at her, sitting on his bed with the sunlight pouring in from the window and feel secure when he looks into her eyes.

Instead, he feels contempt.

He does not feel bad.

It's at that moment that his door bursts open, and he doesn't have to turn around to know who it is. There's only one person with enough gall to ignore all the centuries of palace etiquette to come and find him, but still, he turns to face the intruder anyway and the servant following close behind her.

"Katara?" Zuko asks, but the commotion that ensues prevents any formal greeting from taking place.

"Fire Lord Zuko, I apologize for this interruption—" the servant quickly rambles. It's an older man.

"Did you know that your servants have been hoarding my mail?" Katara demands. The question is painfully rhetorical. Everyone in the room can tell from Zuko's wide eyes that he's had no inclination that this was happening under his jurisdiction, but he feels obligated to answer.

"Of course not," Zuko says. He stares at Katara, and at first all he sees is anger, but it's different than Mai's. Katara isn't annoyed or pestered, the way Mai perpetually seems to be, but hurt. He looks into her eyes and he can see the feeling of intrusion and dehumanization stitched into her irises.

"I don't understand your anger," the servant says, facing Katara directly. "It's customary for concubines to be closely monitored so that we may prevent any interaction with previous lovers." The room falls silent. Zuko's jaw slackens as Katara's tightens. Mai snorts, loudly and uncharacteristically from where she's seated on Zuko's bed before finally rising from her spot.

"As much as I'd love to sit here and listen to this talk about Zuko's... Concubines... I think I better show myself out," Mai says. She looks directly at Zuko, and he has to use all his willpower not to turn this into a fight because there's no feasible way that this is his fault (nor is there any logical reason for Mai to be annoyed at _him_ for this) but he knows, as with most of their conversations nowadays, if he says just _one_ wrong thing, everything will explode between them. He lets her leave without so much as a farewell.

"You," Zuko points to the servant (he really ought to put learning people's names on his agenda. It feels rude to just point at his staff and not know more than a dozen names here and there, but now is hardly the time for reintroductions). Zuko is not so commanding-looking at this very moment. He's sitting on the ground in casual wear instead of his formal robes, surrounded by pieces of parchment, but the servant stands at attention anyway. "I want you to bring Katara all of her mail _immediately_."

"But, Fire Lord Zuko—"

"This is not debatable." The servant nods and bows without speaking again, leaving the room half hunched over to show his respect for Zuko's authority. Zuko looks back at Katara, but she's not looking at him. She's staring at the ground, swaying from the heels to the balls of her feet as if she's entranced and Zuko doesn't want to bring her back to reality. At least not to this one, where she's disrespected and ignored by the same people who worship at his feet.

"I'm so sorry," Zuko says, because there's nothing else he can say that can accurately depict how he feels about all of this. He knows it'll hurt when Katara leaves, but this... These situations won't happen anymore and it's good. It'll be good.

He hopes he can convince himself of this before the week ends.

.

.

.

There's no reason for Katara to be reading the letters she got outside, other than the fact that the she's positive the palace environment might very well be driving her mad. The servant reluctantly gave her four letters after Zuko had ordered it, all of which had broken seals and required Katara to clench her fists and stab her nails into her skin to keep from lashing out again. As glad as she is to have the letters, she regrets storming into Zuko's room the way she did. She's not entirely sure what he's up to on a day to day basis, but he has to have more important things to do than to order his servants to cater to her every whim.

She kneels at the turtleduck pond and smiles when the creatures all come to greet her.

"Did you miss me?" she asks. They all chirp at her. She'll miss them so much more in a few days time.

When the turtleducks settle and continue quietly floating through the water instead of paying her any attention, Katara picks up the scrolls and starts to read them again, starting with the one she received from Hakoda.

 _Katara,_

 _I hope this letter finds you well. Your presence at home is missed, as well as your brother's, though I know he will return home in a few short weeks so that we may begin to rebuild or tribe. I'm incredibly proud of you and your decision to assist the new Fire Lord in his rehabilitation following the war. Your grandmother, as well as the remaining members of our tribe are so amazed by all that you have done. I cannot wait for you to come back to the South so that we can repair all the damages together. I hope the rest of your stay in the Fire Nation is comfortable._

 _Stay safe sweetheart. I'll be waiting with open arms when you come home.  
Dad_

She knows it's childish, but she takes the scroll and hugs it to her chest for a few moments before she opens Sokka's letter.

 _Katara,_

 _I'm sure dad's already sent you a dozen letters since you're still in the Fire Nation, but on the off chance he didn't, hello! A little weird to be talking to you through letters huh? Suki and I dropped Toph off at her house, but we're staying in the Earth Kingdom for a while longer. We never realized how tough the relationship between Toph and her family was when we were travelling, so we want to stay here in case she needs somewhere else to go. I want to be hopeful that things will work out for her, but being optimistic seems more up your alley. I've got my fingers crossed though._

 _The Kyoshi warriors have started training again without Suki, but she'll be back in action in no time. She hasn't decided if she'll join me in the South yet, but if she doesn't, I'm thinking of splitting my time between the Southern Water Tribe and visiting her in the Earth Kingdom. I'll let you know when we iron out the details. Might be fun for the two of us to take on Kyoshi Island again._

 _I haven't heard much from Aang, but there's rumors going around that he's not the last airbender. People in the Earth Kingdom say there are airbenders scattered around the world, still in hiding until they can all regroup and find each other. I'm sure if you haven't heard from him yet, he'll get to you soon._

 _I wanna hear about what you're up to. How's the Fire Nation? Are they treating you well? I know you want to make sure Zuko's okay, but don't forget to take care of yourself too. Your safety should always be your top priority, and if you ever feel endangered, remove yourself from the situation until it dies down. Nothing is worth you getting hurt over._

 _Tell Zuko hi for me and Suki! We might pay ol' Sparky a visit in a few months time to catch up._

 _Til then, take care,  
Sokka_

The other two letters are from Aang, and despite her curiosity, she hasn't read them. Not yet. The last time she saw Aang was in the Earth Kingdom, when he was practically begging her not to go to the Fire Nation with Zuko. The fact that he wrote her twice makes her feel a bit nervous. Instinctively, she touches her lips and thinks of the two times Aang kissed her, once during the Day of Black Sun and again after they watched a play on Ember Island. She can let her imagination run wild with what his notes could possibly say without having to read them.

"Come out here to not think again?"

Katara looks up and smiles when she sees Zuko walk up to her and take a seat beside the pond.

"I wouldn't come all the way out here to _not_ think," Katara says, and it's satisfying to see Zuko smile in response. The turtleducks splash and quack in the pond and it's calm. Almost calm enough for Katara to forgot the circumstances she's under so that she can fully appreciate the moment.

"I really am sorry that you're being treated this way," Zuko says. "If I could fix things, you know I would."

"I know," Katara says.

"That's why I've been thinking..." he trails off, plucking blades of grass from the ground and burning them between his thumb and forefinger. "I want you to come to a meeting with my council this evening. I know it's not really a consolation, but I value your opinion and since everything that's been happening to you lately has been related to people not letting you have a voice... I just thought that maybe... You might like to..."

"I'd be honored," she says. It almost feels ingenuine until she leans over and wraps an arm around his shoulders, offering him a small squeeze, a tiny semblance of a hug. "But... That's not enough. I've been meaning to talk to you; I want to stay in the Fire Nation with you. Just for a while longer."

"We've talked about this," Zuko says, gently shrugging Katara off of him. Katara tries not to look offended but she has a feeling she's failing.

"We didn't talk about it. You talked and didn't give me a choice," Katara says. She stops herself from arguing more. All she can think of is Iroh's advice, how sacrificing her escape from this wretched nation under the pretense of caring for Zuko's health could be setting her up for getting hurt, for more verbal attacks from the Fire Nation and more emotional exhaustion.

"This isn't something I'm willing to compromise on," Zuko says. "I'm just trying to do what's right for you."

"A wise man once told me that when you hide your true intentions behind a false mask of sacrifice, you leave yourself most vulnerable to experiencing loss," Katara says, repeating Iroh's words verbatim. Zuko stares at her, eyes narrowed, lips twitching into a wide smile.

"You've been talking to my uncle."

"A wise man," Katara corrects. Zuko chuckles and shakes his head.

"Maybe that wisdom will come in handy at the meeting."

"Yeah. Maybe." When the turtleducks start chirping again, it almost sounds like laughter.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** you may be wondering why it's taken me 2 months to update (the answer is that I am the Literal Worst™) and after finals I just got lazy af and i didn't mean to be gone for so long (sorry!) but i'm back ayeee

not much to say for this chapter except that i had to reread this fic over twice because it's been so long since i've written anything that i've forgotten what i already wrote lol. also... i struggled hardcore with getting this to go where i wanted to so the next chapter will be better i'm sorry! (pls love me and review this anyway)

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The silence in the room is almost painful.

As always before a big meeting, Zuko looks at himself in a mirror, but instead of standing in his own chamber, he's in Mai's, eyeing his robed reflection. It's actually unusual for her to be giving him the silent treatment. She's always made it clear what's on her mind. But now, she sits with her lips fastened, not even bothering to look in her boyfriend's direction. Part of this irritates Zuko. He wants to scold her for acting so childish, for going out of her way to ignore him when she knows he would never do anything with the intention of making her unhappy. She's his girlfriend. He loves her. He doesn't deserve her anger.

The other part of him, which he is trying his damnedest to ignore, feels dejected.

This isn't like the silence between him and Katara earlier in front of the turtleduck pond. That was natural. Calm. Peaceful. The conversation between them had came to a definite, gentle end, and they were cradled in the silence that didn't need to be filled. This however, is nothing like that. This is intentional and vengeful. This silence is punishment.

Zuko hates it.

"You can't actually be mad at me for this," he finally mutters as he smooths the invisible wrinkles on his clothes. "I didn't call Katara my concubine. A servant did." He turns around to look at Mai who is quietly picking her nails as she remains seated on her bed. Her expression never changes, though it rarely ever does, especially when she's as upset as she is right now.

"You didn't correct him either," Mai states, sliding further back onto her bed. She inspects her nails more thoroughly and it's all Zuko can do to keep from yelling at her. She knows this is getting on his nerves. He knows she's trying to grate on him, baiting him so she can have more of a reason to be irritated, but he's not in the mood to fight. Not now, not ever, and especially not over something as silly as this.

"Since when did you start caring about what other people think?" Zuko asks. He contemplates walking closer to Mai when she sits up, but her words halt him.

"Since when did you stop?" Suddenly, she's uninterested with her nails as she looks up to Zuko with crossed arms. That typical look. He thinks back to a time when that expression was captivating to him, when he'd watch her look at everything in disdain, only for her eyes to soften when she looked his way. Those days seem to be long gone.

"Mai," Zuko sighs, taking a few steps toward his unreceptive girlfriend. Her scowl deepens. "I don't want to fight about this right now."

"Because of your meeting," Mai groans. "Let me guess, you'll do better in the future, you're just too busy, too stressed, too busy recovering—"

"What do you want me to say?" he asks. He's not sure when he got so close to Mai, looking down at her, just inches from where he stands. It's a stalemate. They stare at each other, matching glares, tensed muscles, minds full of words they know could mutilate each other emotionally. And then, silence. He doesn't no how much time is passing, but it's slow, agonizingly so, until Mai finally speaks up again.

"I don't want you to _say_ anything," Mai replies. "I just want things to change."

Zuko almost falls for it; he almost slides into the trap of delving deeper into this argument and allowing his anger to best him. She's being vague and passive and so infuriating that he wants to keep going and hash it out the way they always do, but... He's tired. He's tired physically, he's tired emotionally, and so he takes a step back and takes a deep breath.

"Fine," he says. "They will."

He doesn't know how. He doesn't know when. But he knows Mai is right, and sooner or later, things will come to a head between them. Until then, all they have is silence.

.

.

.

Everything happens too fast.

Zuko refrains from telling Katara too much about the meeting she's going to sit in on, for reasons she doesn't understand, and tells her when and where to meet him and his council. Most of his instructions go over her head. _Talk like this! Sit like that!_ The fact that she even makes it to the correct room on time is worthy of praise.

Katara sits, listening to the councilmen spew jargon back and forth around her while Zuko takes it all in, silently musing as they all discuss problems she didn't even know were Zuko's responsibility. She's seated closest to the young Fire Lord, on her knees at a table the way the rest of the council sits. The room is more daunting than she would've imagined it being, with Zuko on a throne, elevated from everyone else. Flames flicker behind him and cast intimidating shadows across the floor, and just like every other setting in the Fire Nation, no one acknowledges Katara's existence.

The council wastes no time in getting into the heart of their discussion, the fate of the Fire Nation militia in the Earth Kingdom, with particular attention being paid to Ba Sing Se. Katara finds herself more invested than she thought she would've been, eyeing the men before her as words are passed back and forth. Poverty, hunger, anger, riots. ' _The tension between our nations is reaching a breaking point_ ' , ' _there's no feasible place for all our men to go to if we remove them from the Earth Kingdom, but nothing will improve if we don't do so._ ' For a while, she wonders if the people discussing issues in front of her have been affected by the war. She wonders how much they truly understand they things they speak of.

Katara waits, for something she can't quite explain, for an opening, for a pause, for a chance to interject her thoughts. She's no political expert; Sokka was the one who kept up with these topics as a child while she focused her efforts on bending, and while she's smart enough to understand these Fire Nation men explaining the issue of having nowhere to relocate their men, she is not sure what proper etiquette needs to be adhered to for her to express herself.

It goes on for entirely too long. Her hands are in fists in her lap. Her tongue is snug between her teeth. She wants to wait for a lull, for a moment where she won't have to talk over someone, but the council is too quick, too used to spreading ideas from one mouth to another like wildfire that she knows the only way she'll be able to get a word in is to shout above the noise.

She doesn't want to, but she does anyway.

"There may be somewhere else your military can go for the time being," Katara chimes in. She knows she's interrupting someone but not a single head turns to her in the following silence. Instead, all eyes turn to Zuko as the room awaits for the inevitable punishment, verbal or otherwise, they assume Katara will receive for speaking out. The quietness of the room burns her. She knows how her own people would handle this kind of disrespect, with quick chastising and reprimanding. She doesn't mean to, but she turns her head slightly to look at Zuko herself. This is not the angry boy from the catacombs of Ba Sing Se. He's not the troubled exiled prince from a year ago. Now he's regal, he is refined. He is the boy Katara has grown to know, but someone different still that she feels she has not met.

"Continue," Zuko says, nodding his head in Katara's direction. "I want to hear what you have to say." There's something oddly intimate about the phrase, about the way Zuko looks down _at_ her without looking down _upon_ her. Katara wonders if she holds his gaze for too long and if the pause between Zuko's speech and her own feels as eternal to everyone else in the room.

"The Southern Water Tribe needs help rebuilding itself," Katara begins once she collects her thoughts. Her blue eyes skirt the sea of men before her with equally disinterested expressions. "If you're looking for a place for some of your military to go while also making amends with other nations, that might be one option. The war took a toll on the South in ways it didn't affect other parts of the world. I know the Northern Tribe has said they would like to help aid us, but... With the amount of damage that was done..." Katara trails off and the council begins to murmur amongst itself until Zuko speaks up again.

"I see no reason why that couldn't be done," he says. Katara is almost certain she sees him smiling at her, but she feels it might be improper for her to stare long enough to find out.

"There is still one problem with that, however, Fire Lord Zuko," one of the councilmen states. Katara whips her head to look at the man speaking. Not a single physical trait stands out to her.

"And what would that be?" Zuko asks.

"With the exception of Ba Sing Se, that sounds like it could be reasonable... But there are too many issues for us to just take our men out of Ba Sing Se specifically. We have known for decades that Ba Sing Se was a place for refugees to go, including some of our own people." There's a pause and Katara is certain everyone turns to Zuko again when this is said. "There's a large possibility that all kinds of people are there. Fugitives, traitors, prisoners of war..." Katara looks at Zuko as the list grows longer and longer.

"And how do you propose we find them?" Zuko asks. "I don't mean to sound impatient, but delaying the decision on the off chance that we can find some war criminals—many of who might not even _be_ criminals under my jurisdiction—seems impractical."

"I agree," the same councilman says. "But we do not know yet _which_ people are in Ba Sing Se, or whether they're being held involuntarily." Katara can feel the air getting tense around them. Zuko looks more serious than she's seen him look in a long time. His eyes narrow and he leans forward, keeping his voice level.

"And who do you suspect is important enough to spend our time and effort searching for them?" No one moves, no one speaks, no one breathes, and Katara recognizes the hopeful, desperate pleading that permeates Zuko's eyes, the look on his face that begs the councilman to say what he wants to hear more than anything, the words that will incite actions Zuko would normally be too logical to fall victim to:

"Princess Ursa."

Zuko's reply is instantaneous.

"Remove the military from Ba Sing Se," Zuko says. "I'm going to find her myself."

.

.

.

"I might be gone for a while." Zuko isn't sure why he tells Azula this, or why he decided to see her again, but he says it anyway, in what can only be described as desperation to salvage the scraps of their relationship. The words spill from his lips like excess saliva and stain his sister's ears. Azula sits on her bed while he's on a chair in front of her, careful not to move to quickly or startle her. Azula is looking healthier now, but vacant. Her eyes are dull and empty, and trained on anything other than her older brother. Perhaps she won't react. Maybe she has nothing to say to him.

"Where are you going?" Azula asks. She stares at her blank sheets instead of him, her fingers fiddling with the starch white blankets.

"The Earth Kingdom," he tells her. He came to the decision almost instantly in front of his council once they told him they were sure she was in Ba Sing Se. He knew he hadn't thought it through thoroughly enough yet. Sure, he'd move the militia to the South, and then send some people to the North if they needed the assistance as well, and he'd have to think of some way to moderate his troops to prevent any rogue actions under his name while he went to Ba Sing Se himself to find his mother— _if_ the rumors were even true... And then the issue of Katara, who insisted on staying in the Fire Nation, only for him to change his plans entirely. He briefly thinks about how he'll break this news to Mai, especially now that they're in an argument and he doesn't really want to talk to her all too much, and it's enough to make him focus on the present.

He waits to see if Azula will ask any more questions, she stares back as if her gaze is prodding enough.

"I—I'm going to look for our mother," Zuko says. Azula swallows hard, staring at her sheets with more intent than she had been before.

"And will you come back?" she asks. Her voice is low, almost like she's musing aloud the possibility of him not returning, but she doesn't sound malicious. She almost sounds saddened. Concerned.

"Yes. Of course," he says. Azula's expression remains static but slowly, she turns her head to Zuko and it all comes crashing down on him like a wave. Her eyes, her lips, her long, thin nose. Every physical thing about her is indistinguishably Ursa. She was always the splitting image of their mother. But... He sees something else. Something that's different from Ursa and Ozai but is still eerily familiar that he knows he's seen before.

"Why are you staring at me?" she demands, and he drops his gaze immediately. He knows he will regret saying the words once he thinks of them, but he allows himself to say it anyway.

"I see a lot of myself in you," Zuko admits.

"What?" Azula scoffs. When she laughs, it almost feels like she's her old, controlled self, but the ambiance of her room keeps Zuko present and grounded. "I am _not_ like _you_ , Zuko."

"For starters, you're stubborn—"

"How dare you ever insinuate—"

"You don't ever listen—"

"You and I are _nothing_ alike, Zuko—"

"You're only proving my point by arguing with me now—"

Azula doesn't respond, not with words. Instead she huffs, impulsively and angrily, blowing blue flames straight at Zuko's face. He only barely manages to dissipate them before they touch him. The annoyance in her eyes is suddenly replaced with fear, as if she suddenly realizes the severity of what she just attempted and how she might be punished. It only takes a moment for her face to become slick with tears, hot and heavy and rolling down her cheeks and her eyes swirl with too many emotions far too quickly, fear, anger, hurt, confusion, and Zuko wants (or perhaps he feels obligated) to console her.

"This time a year ago, I used to be just like you," Zuko says. She's seething now, snarling and crying and he knows he should go now before he disturbs her more, but he can't move yet, staring at his sister who he can't decide if he actually loves or if he merely feels required to stay by her side. "I used to feel nothing, or too much, or the wrong thing. But I had someone who never gave up on me, and I was able to change."

Azula stares blankly, blinking rapidly as her tears continue to fall. She's not looking at Zuko anymore and he knows she's reached her capacity for the day. She's no longer going to respond to him for the rest of this visit.

Zuko stands, awkwardly, his chair scraping across the floor and he looks at Azula one final time before he leaves.

"I'm not leaving you alone, Azula. I'm not giving up on you," he says. She looks up at him, her eyes shift lazily, and she doesn't say a word.

.

.

.

When Zuko returns to his chamber for the night, he wonders if it's possible for anyone to have it all, if it's reasonable for him to want things with Mai to return to normal and to want Katara to stay with him no matter how selfish it is, if he can really pray that one day he makes a breakthrough with his sister and that this irrational trip he plans to make for his mother will turn out to be worth it.

When he can't fall asleep, he tries to calculate how likely it will be that at the end of this, he will have nothing.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** i'm sorry it's taken forever for me to update, but, as you probably know if you read these notes at the beginning of every chapter/if you follow me on tumblr, between work/school/clubs/job hunting/grad school applications i have absolutely zero free time (but i'm not giving up on this fic i swear). i had to edit this chapter a lot because, ironically, i thought it was too shippy... (lol the first few drafts of this chapter were really cringy and corny) but i didn't want to ruin the flow of the fic sooo i hope you enjoy this and leave a review por favor xx

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 _"Thank you," Katara says, without any prompting._ _Zuko looks at Katara and realizes that she's talking to him. This is a stupid realization; he and Katara are the only ones on Appa, but still, her voice, despite being so familiar, always sounds so foreign when it's addressing_ him. _She hasn't really been talking since they faced Yon Rha without prodding, and he's surprised that this is her first attempt at initiating interaction. He looks at her quickly; it's his turn to steer Appa back to the group and he prefers to have his eyes trained in front of him, but even in a passing glance, Katara looks better than she has in the past few days. Her eyes are still duller than usual and her small smile seems forced, but she's smiling in his direction. He thinks that maybe, she'll recover from this. She'll be okay after all._

 _"For what?" Zuko asks. He feels silly for not knowing and having to ask, and he's sure this must be ruining the moment somehow. The wind blows lightly and the sun is beginning to set, painting the sky a gradient of blues and reds and oranges. Appa grunts occasionally to fill the silence, but for now, the world is truly just Zuko and Katara, the only two beings in this moment._

 _"For going on this trip with me. For giving me a choice." Her voice fades out for a while. "For understanding."_

 _Zuko forces himself to turn around and look at Katara now, despite his instinct to keep looking forward. She doesn't have to elaborate for him to know what she means. They'll be back with the others soon, but no matter how many times they might have to recount their adventure, no one will ever understand the mutual connection they now share because of it._

 _"I should thank you too, then," Zuko says._

 _"For?"_

 _"For giving me a second chance. Letting me redeem myself to you..." He thinks for a moment before he continues. "For being the first person to ever trust me." They float through the quiet air, with Appa's grunts as background noise. The sun reluctantly tips beyond the horizon and the sky darkens to a rich indigo within the blink of an eye. The moment is almost lost until Katara eventually speaks up._

 _"You earned it," she assures him, and Zuko has no doubts about her sincerity._

 _._

 _._

 _._

"I'm just not sure how well you thought this through."

The words aren't foreign to Zuko, especially not from Iroh as the pair find themselves sitting out in the garden. This is one of Zuko's least favorite places to get work done, with all the animals crawling and chirping to distract him. He finds it especially irritating this morning, considering the fact that he'd been up far too late talking to Azula the previous night. He's sure his exhaustion shows in the circles under his eyes and the slump of his shoulders, but his uncle enjoys the fresh air, so as they sit under the drooping leaves of one of the old, oaky trees, Zuko refrains from complaining as much as he really wants to.

"Nothing is set in stone yet, Uncle," Zuko says. He gestures to the handful of scrolls seated on his lap while trying his hardest not to let his boredom consume him. His council made sure to provide as much information as they could about the situation in Ba Sing Se, though from what he can tell, a minimal amount seems to pertain to his mother. Zuko knows it's selfish to think this way, but having any hints of his mother's whereabouts incites a kind of genuine hope in him that he hasn't felt in years, and he can only pray that he won't regret getting this emotional for nothing should the rumors of his mother's location be false. He fiddles with a scroll at random and skims the writing quickly. "I have to figure out where to start looking first, at least."

"There's just so much that you have to consider, nephew," Iroh says. "Of course, I'm not telling you to ignore this altogether. I understand why you need to go on this journey. But you also have to realize how dangerous this mission is. I don't think you fully grasp the conflict in Ba Sing Se right now."

Zuko opens his mouth to contest this, but has no good responses.

"I'm working on getting our military out of the Earth Kingdom as soon as possible," Zuko finally says. "Once that's done I'm sure the problems in the Earth Kingdom will begin to die down."

"The issue runs far deeper than this," Iroh says. He gives Zuko a pointed look, one that says Zuko should know all this from the meetings (had he been listening like any halfway responsible person would've), but doesn't verbally reprimand him. "Small riots have been happening all over the city, demanding for Ba Sing Se to be cleansed. Many of the people want any Fire Nation citizens, not just our military, to leave their land. Some are even demanding anyone other than Earth Kingdom citizen be pushed out. Removing our military presence at this point may not be enough to persuade people to remain peaceful, especially not after a century of war."

Zuko finds himself chewing lightly on the inside of his cheek. He knows he is partly responsible for the disarray of Ba Sing Se, and though Iroh never brings it up, Zuko can't help but pin the blame on himself for this.

"How bad is it?" Zuko asks. He's not exactly meeting Iroh's gaze; he can't shake the feeling of shame that overwhelms him when it comes to this city, but he has to know what the situation is like. He needs to know how much his actions have affected others.

"There have been no casualties so far but… Things have been becoming more unstable. Immigrants are being strictly monitored to prevent Fire Nation citizens from entering. Arrests are being made over fears of firebenders starting trouble or planning to overthrow the city. Things have yet to escalate to extreme physical violence but it is not the safest place for any member of the Fire Nation to be right now."

"Including my mother," Zuko points out. His grips the scroll in his hand a little tighter.

"Including you," Iroh supplements. There's a long pause before Zuko finally sighs and continues looking at his scrolls.

"Well, that's why you're not coming with me," Zuko says. "I need someone here to oversee everything until I get back."

"I understand," Iroh says. He looks out at the garden and all the reddened leaves swaying in the breeze. "But I advise that you do not set your hopes too high. There is a possibility that you will come back from this journey having found something that you did not know you were looking for." Zuko isn't really reading anymore; his eyes land on the characters inscribed on the parchment, and he's tempted to tell Iroh to stop being so abstract in his speech, but instead, he resigns, and heeds his uncle's advice.

.

.

.

"You can't be mad at me forever." Zuko looks at Mai from across the dining room as she continues to pick at the neatly packed noodles in the bowl in front of her. He hates feeling this frustrated. It'd be just as easy for him to ignore whatever tension is brewing between them the way she seems to, but he knows it's a trap. The second he stops begging and vying for her attention, everything will turn around and be _his_ fault. It'll be his fault for not caring, for not trying, for being too emotionally detached for her to ever make things right.

The longer they go on with this spat, the more he wants to fall into the trap. He picks at his own bowl of noodles, but the ambiance of the room ruins his appetite.

"You can't expect me to pretend to agree with every decision you make," Mai finally retorts. She quietly takes a bite of her lunch, never bothering to offer Zuko so much as a glance, and he can feel himself seething from the other end of the table. "I'm your girlfriend, Zuko, not your yes-man."

"My political decisions shouldn't affect how you see me," Zuko says. "I thought long and hard about removing our military from Ba Sing Se, and I know it's what's best for our people. I thought you'd at least appreciate the fact that I was the one to tell you so you wouldn't have to hear it from someone else."

"What do you want? A pat on the back?" Mai breaks her deadpan demeanor long enough to scowl at Zuko and it's the most emotion he's seen her exhibit in a long time. "My father won't have a job anymore once you're done moving the military around, did you think about that? And then you're thinking about sending our people to the North and South Pole to fix those crummy villages you used to tell me about? How did you expect me to react?"

Zuko's eyes narrow. "I told you about those things before I joined the Avatar."

"Right," Mai says. "Because joining the Avatar and his ragtag team of misfits _really_ changed you as a person."

"Yes," Zuko says defensively. "It really did." He wants to ask what she doesn't understand about this, but he almost doesn't want to know. There's something brewing and he feels like if he asks too many questions, they'll never be able to salvage what they had.

"Whatever," Mai says. "Don't think I'm going to act like I think any of these decisions are right just because _you_ made them."

"I'm the Fire Lord," he says, ignoring how childish it feels to have to affirm his position to Mai of all people. "My decisions might not always seem right, but they _will_ be respected." Mai's eyes flutter as if she's using all her self control not to roll them.

"Your father stripped you of your birth right for years and you spent months living as a fugitive," Mai says. "Being the Fire Lord doesn't absolve you of criticism." Zuko pretends that the tightness in his chest is a knee jerk reflex out of anger, rather than hurt. He knows this is how all arguments with Mai go, but this time, it hurts a lot more than he remembers it ever feeling. Zuko picks at his noodles and Mai stays quiet as they both let silence float around them.

"You know," Zuko finally speaks up. He's still looking at his noodles as he speaks; he's not sure how his anger will manifest itself if he looks at Mai right now. "I don't want a pat on the back or anything for telling you this, but I thought you should also know that I'm not just removing our military from the Earth Kingdom. I'm going to Ba Sing Se to find my mother." Zuko waits for reprimanding until he realizes that he can't even hear the squelching of noodles between chopsticks. When he finally looks up, Mai is staring back at him with big blank eyes.

"Your mother?" she repeats. She mulls over this information, picking it apart and processing every piece of it. "How do you know she's there?"

"There have been rumors―"

"Ah," Mai interrupts, a sardonic smile making an appearance on her face. "Of course. Rumors." Zuko sighs; he can't help it. It's exhausting, it's draining to be playing these games and dancing in circles when they both know Mai knows exactly how to say what she feels.

"What's that supposed to mean, Mai?" Zuko demands. "Just tell me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she repeats. Her voice raises a few decibels as her sentences progress. "It means of course you're running off again. Anytime you have something good going for you here in the Fire Nation you find a way to ruin it for yourself. You did it as a child when you spoke out against your father. You did it when you walked out on me to join the Avatar. And now that you're here and you're the Fire Lord―you could have anything you want! You could actually put our people first like you've always preached about before your coronation―you're ready to just up and leave at the first chance you get."

Zuko feels his chest ache again, and this time he _knows_ it's not out of anger. His eyes burn like mad, and he wants to get up and run and forget this interaction ever happened, but he knows to keep his dignity in tact, he has to stay here and take everything she says without a physical reaction.

"I just thought," Zuko pauses to clear his throat when he realizes how croaky and distorted it sounds. "I thought I should be the one to tell you," Zuko murmurs. Mai doesn't respond. They spend the rest of their lunch picking at their bowls of uneaten food. Neither one of them says a word.

.

.

.

This is wrong.

He knows it's wrong as soon as the urge hits him and he genuinely toys with the idea to leave his room in the middle of the night to go see Katara. After all, it's not a far walk. If he wanted, he could make it to her chamber in a few short minutes, ignoring the questioning and staring from the guards doing their nightly rounds. He has no way of telling how late it is and can only assume that sunrise is still hours away. All he knows is how starkly awake he is right now, from the thoughts buzzing in his brain, to the twitch of his muscles that's usually faint enough to ignore, and all he wants is some sort of company to quell him.

He knows this is wrong, because his first thought should be to go to Mai to work out whatever it is that he's feeling, but it isn't. And no matter how much he knows that logically, he should feel worse about this, all he feels is the unrelenting urge to speak to Katara until he feels peace and solace.

He tries to list all the possible consequences of him going to Katara at this hour to deter himself from seeing her.

Naturally, he rolls out of bed anyway.

It takes a moment for him to throw on something more appropriate than a silk robe and to pull his hair up and out of his face. He slips into the hall, not even bothering to light the path for himself. Even with the years lost to his banishment, he knows the palace corridors like the skin on his bones. When he encounters his guards, he doesn't engage with them. He doesn't greet them or do anything to make his presence known. He stands tall, stays quiet, ignores the confused, salutations until he's in the wing Katara currently resides in. Perhaps he'll regret his stoic manner in the morning when his head's clearer.

When he reaches her door, there's a moment's hesitation as his knuckles linger on the hard surface. Maybe he'd be waking her. Maybe this was a poorer decision than he'd originally thought. His dull nails dig lightly into his palms as his fist remains suspended in front of him. When he finally works up the courage to knock, it feels as though his hand is working independently from the rest of his body.

There's a long, numbing silence before he can hear some shuffling on Katara's end and the door finally creaks open. Big blue eyes peer up at him from the opening, as sleepy as they are confused.

"Katara." He exhales her name and it feels soothing just to be in her presence.

She squints before opening the door wider and mutters, "This is only going to reinforce the idea that I'm your concubine."

Zuko cracks a halfhearted smile at Katara's quip, and takes her nonverbal cue to step inside her chamber.

"I didn't mean to wake you," Zuko begins, though he feels foolish for saying it. He _did_ mean to―he wouldn't be here if that wasn't his intention―but he doesn't really have a reason for coming to see her. He wanted to, he thought it would make his restlessness a bit more bearable, but now that he's with her, he's not sure what he really thought was going to happen. He fumbles through the darkness with her and his eyes adjust to the lack of light. He can see her moving to her bed; the sheets rustle as she shimmies back amongst her blankets. Zuko chooses to sit on the ground. He already feels like he's intruding. He doesn't want to invade her personal space too.

"It's okay," Katara assures him, and even while she's between yawns, she manages to mellow the mood. "Is everything alright, though?"

"Yes," Zuko says too quickly. He huffs, and the silhouette of Katara's head tilts as if she's waiting for the real answer. "I'm just thinking too much as usual. Can't fall asleep."

"You have a lot to think about," Katara says. The only illumination at the moment is the bit of moonlight that manages to creep in from her window. Zuko doesn't need to see Katara to know she's exhausted. Her voice is fragile, groggy. Her shadow twists and slumps on her bed in a futile attempt to keep her tired body awake and upright. But she's conscious, she's listening, and he already feels the weight of the world being lifted off his shoulders.

"Don't I always?" he asks. He swings his wrist around so that a flame dances in the cozy cage of his fingers, lighting her room just enough for him to be able to make out the outline of her features. She looks older than when they met, more mature and jaded, but she doesn't look broken. She doesn't look so irreversibly changed, the way Zuko feels.

"I know it was impulsive to say I'm going to find my mother," he finally admits. If he hadn't been able to see her, he would've thought Katara had fallen asleep amidst the silence. Instead, she looks at the flame in his hand. Flecks of reds and yellows shimmer in her eyes and he wonders if this is as far as the conversation will go. Maybe there were limits to how much he could open up to her that he hadn't realized before. Maybe he misjudged how receptive Katara would be. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made such a rash decision and I shouldn't have woken you up to talk about it either but―"

"Do you think I'm going to lecture you about wanting to find your mother?" Katara asks. Zuko's body feels hot, and he knows it's not from the flame he's currently manipulating. The question sounds rhetorical, but her firm stare lets him know that his hesitation cannot let the silence between them last forever.

"I know I didn't handle the situation as well as I could have." Zuko huffs. " _Should_ have."

"Of course I understand how you're feeling, Zuko," Katara says. She doesn't have to say it, but he knows that she empathizes with him wholeheartedly. Even in her sleepy eyes, he can see the girl he saw in the crystal catacombs all those months ago, optimistic, caring, and hopeful, letting him pour his heart out like blood on her lap. But this time is different. He sees all of her, the girl from the catacombs, but also the girl that encountered Yon Rha, passionate, impulsive, confused yet controlled. Fueling him. Supporting him. Invigorating him.

Katara's not touching Zuko; she hasn't gotten closer than arm's length since he entered the room, but something about her words makes him feel safer. Calmer. Cared for. He doesn't bother trying to hide how sincere his smile is with apathy or wit. Instead, he says, "I don't think you understand how good that is to hear."

He can't see very well, and he knows it might be a trick of the light, but he's almost certain Katara smiles at him with the same tenderness he feels in his chest.


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** k this is a bit long but i feel like we gotta talk about how long this update took. for a while i lost interest in writing this fic and i knew forcing myself to write it would just make this fic suck, and i went through a lot to make the set up something i was proud of, so i figured not writing for a few weeks would help. then the end of the semester came up which meant no writing + i wrote 2 other versions (as in this is the third gosh darn time i've written this chapter jfc) because i figured if i was gonna be gone for so long this chapter had to be perfect. or as perfect as a fanfic chapter can be lol. so here we are. and i know i say this all the time but a legitimate goal for the new year is to update this fic consistently, especially since i have lots of ideas now since i've had some time to think about it. also, thank you to everyone who reads, favs, recommends, and reviews this fic y'all are the real mvps

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"Do you really not want me to go?" Zuko asks. Mai sits beside him in his study, and he knows this is a very unfair question. For one, Mai's opinion doesn't actually matter (or at the very least, certainly not as much as Zuko is making it sound like it does). There's been far too much planning already invested in his departure. Nothing short of divine intervention could keep him in the Fire Nation. Mai included. On top of that, no matter what Mai says, he's well within his rights to start an argument here. If she tells him no, he can chastise her for standing in the way of finding one of the most important people to him. If she says yes, he can get on her for lying. At this point, he's really only asking to be terrible. It shouldn't please him this much to be this way.

Zuko knows where Mai stands on this (she really doesn't want him to go) and he knows where _he_ stands on this (he's still somewhere between hurt and furious that she's acting this way) and quite frankly he's not going to attempt to come to any kind of compromise. This is important. She should know why it's important. The least she can do is not make him feel guilty for his decision.

"Are you going to answer my question?" Zuko prods again. He peeks at her but she's sitting with her arms crossed over her chest, avoiding his gaze. "Do you really not want me to go find my mother?"

Provoking her. He shouldn't be this excited to play with fire.

"Depends," Mai drawls. She's picking at her nails. "Do you want me to be honest?" There's a moment of stillness where Zuko could snap. He could bark at her for still undermining the importance of him looking for his mother and for being so snarky and treat her just as she treated him when he first told her he was leaving so that maybe she'll feel the same way―

He takes a deep breath. He won't let his frustration get the best of him.

"This isn't fair," Zuko says once he's calm enough to know he won't lose his temper. Mai doesn't react. Of course she doesn't. "You don't have to agree with me on everything, but I just wish you'd try to understand."

"I'm not going to stop you from leaving," Mai says. "But what _you_ need to understand is this: What I want is for you to want to be here with me. I want you to stop letting your past, your feelings about your mother's disappearance, your anger about your childhood, and Azula and your father go. I want to be a priority to you, not an option―"

"Where is this coming from?" Zuko asks. "Everything was fine until―"

"Until what, Zuko?" Mai demands, her voice louder than usual. "And don't you dare say until you said you were leaving because you know that's a lie. Things weren't right between us long before that happened."

Zuko concedes. She makes a good point, one that he doesn't want to acknowledge. Things haven't been good between them for a very long time now but he can't figure out why. He thought time would fix things. He thought apologies would fix things. He thought if they were meant to be, they would've figured out things between them. But this doesn't feel repairable. It feels damaged, irreconcilable, like a fire was started that's lapping up everything, and neither of them can contain it.

"What happened?" he finally asks. He doesn't know how to be more specific than that. They've had rough times before, ugly, horrible times, arguments, spats, break ups, but he doesn't remember things ever being this bad. It's never ever been like this.

"I can't be everything," Mai says. "When you were first recovering from the Agni Kai with Azula, I tried to be patient and nurturing and supportive. But that's not who I am, not really. And I'm not going to change for you, Zuko, you should know that."

"I don't want you to change."

"Then you don't want me."

It's deathly quiet. Zuko hates it. Mai is staring at him now, her eyes wide, wavering, passionate. He's never seen her emote this much before, raising her voice, eyes wet and shimmering, voice dry and cracking. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know if there's anything he _can_ say.

"I just don't know how to be what you need," Mai continues. She swallows thickly. "You need me to understand the things you do and how you feel but I just don't get it, Zuko. I don't understand why you care about the Earth Kingdom. I don't get why you had to join the avatar, or why right now, you're going to drop everything to chase rumors that your mother has been hiding out in Ba Sing Se for years. I keep trying to understand, I keep trying to get it, but it feels like the more time I spend with you, the more I get to know, the more of a stranger you become."

Zuko considers this for a moment. Maybe she's right. Maybe she doesn't know him. And maybe she deserves to.

When he blurts out the next thing on his mind, he justifies it with that reasoning.

"I've been visiting Azula," he says. "She's not in prison, either. She's under the care of physicians for her mental issues. And I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't like it. But the past few weeks, between meetings, late at night, whenever I had the time... I've gone to see her. To talk to her. To make sure she's okay." Zuko's first instinct is to look down. He waits for an angry verbal attack that's sure to follow a confession of that caliber. Mai risked her life to save him from his sister. He can't imagine the assault that's sure to ensue.

Instead, Zuko is met with silence. He has no choice but to look at Mai. The expression on her face, the anger, the betrayal is something Zuko wishes he hadn't seen. He'll be lucky if he ever forgets it. She seethes, balling her hands into fists in her lap as her expression towards him sours.

"I really don't understand you, Zuko." She forces the words out between barred teeth. She stands to leave his study, but before she reaches the door, she pauses to add, "And I don't think I ever will."

.

.

.

There's a very small stack of unfinished letters on Katara's desk that she fears she may never get to complete.

It's barely been a week since Zuko made his declaration to leave for Ba Sing Se, and with that, came an onslaught of responsibilities that needed to be taken care of. One is attending dozens upon dozens of meetings to get caught up on the situation as it unfolds in the Earth Kingdom. Katara had made it abundantly clear that if Zuko was going on a mission to find his mother, she would be there to accompany him and he was surprisingly complicit. It crosses her mind that maybe his intentions were never to send her home per se, just to get her out of the toxic palace environment. Ba Sing Se might not be the ideal substitute, but it's better than the Fire Nation, and at least now, Zuko is accepting of her presence.

The only downside to this is that Katara is all but required to go to these meetings with Zuko (after all, it's the easiest way to get her up to speed on everything she needs to know about what they're about to dive into) and she barely has time to process anything. The meetings are fast paced and back to back, impossible to distinguish from one another. Her days bleed into a constant stream of mental stimulation, trying to narrow down where the lost princess might be, figuring out what needs to be done before Zuko leaves and who will cater to what tasks while he's gone.

There's also reading, lots and lots of reading from these meetings, and occasionally, Zuko will hand Katara a couple of scrolls and ask her to look them over. That night is no exception. She's in bed, half dressed, scanning over another scroll while pacing around her room. It's a compilation of incident reports, rather mundane and boring, but she forces her eyes to skim over the reading on the parchment. There's no telling what might be useful. She can't afford to get distracted.

It could be worse after all. There's been plenty of scrolls that Zuko has tasked her with reading that went straight over her head. Even if she's not particularly intrigued by this reading, she'll at least understand it.

She tucks her hair, which is now loose and in long tousled waves on her shoulders, behind her ears, mumbling while she reads. _Assault. Larceny. Theft. Arson. Theft. Theft. Battery. Theft._ She struggles to make it through the list before she notices something different. Disturbing the peace. There's more crimes listed, but she notices as she goes on a pattern is forming; there's more and more incidents marked as 'disturbing the peace' with few if any suspects listed.

The details are what really catch her attention. A handful of the incidents seem like average behavior, loud, disorderly conduct, or lewd public acts, but a few of them, too many to be coincidental list the destruction of property around Ba Sing Se. _No weapon was found at the scene of the crime. It is likely that the property was destroyed through use of bending, though there is little evidence that this was the result of either earth or firebending. No suspects were brought into questioning._

Another three incidents have an almost identical summary. Katara tries not to get ahead of herself and let her mind wander to what she knows is a dangerous place, but she finds herself rushing to her desk anyway, scroll in hand, searching for the letters that were addressed to her not too long ago. The letters she started writing lay on top, half finished and smudged and she tosses them lazily to the side. Aang's letters are both folded neatly, and she winces, only slightly, when she touches them. She still hasn't read them yet, and now she's worried it's far too late to.

At the very least, now is not the time.

She rests his letters elsewhere and grabs the ones written by Hakoda and Sokka. Hakoda's is short and quaint, but not what she's looking for. Her heart starts thumping and she wonders if maybe she made this up in her head, maybe she's not going to find what she's looking for in Sokka's letter.

It's too late to deny the hope bubbling up in her chest. There's a possibility she won't find what she's looking for, sure. But there's a chance that maybe she will.

She pries Sokka's letter open with shaking fingers, trying not to drop it as she reads. She can practically hear her brother's voice, but she can't be distracted by how much she misses him. She needs to know if she's right in her assumptions. She needs some confirmation.

When she finds the line she's looking for, she can't help but shriek in response.

 _I haven't heard much from Aang, but there's rumors going around that he's not the last airbender. People in the Earth Kingdom say there are airbenders scattered around the world, still in hiding until they can all regroup and find each other._

Katara bites her tongue when she reads the line.

It might not relate to his mother, but it something she knows she'll have to tell Zuko in the morning.

.

.

.

There's no reason for Zuko to tell Azula as much as he does about his plans to go to the Earth Kingdom. For one, she's not very responsive. He's starting to realize now that for most visits, she's perfectly alright. She understands when people talk to her and she follows directions; she just chooses to be silent. Which is fine. He'd rather sit in silence than have to sit through a dozen of her taunts.

And sometimes she actually will say things and interject here and there. Probably not enough to make this an actual conversation, but enough to prevent Zuko from monologuing. So long as they're civil, and Azula responds occasionally, there's no harm in him coming to her, even if there's nothing to gain from these interactions.

Still, it's a nice break to be here, to vent to someone so he's not constantly dumping on Katara or dealing with Mai's criticism. It's a getaway almost. A hideaway.

The irony doesn't go unnoticed.

For just a minute, Zuko wants to look at his sister and engrave her face to his brain. Her hair is just about touching her shoulders now, and he's noticed, even if she still looks distant and uninterested, she looks better. Her cheeks have color, her eyes are brighter, even if the difference is minimal from when she was first placed in this hut. He looks at her and feels hope.

"Will mother want to see me when she comes back?" Azula asks. She's staring off to the side, not at Zuko, and it's one of the first things she's said this visit. Not that there was much of a chance for her to say anything. Zuko had briefly explained places in Ba Sing Se where they were likely to start looking and Azula only seemed to be paying a minimal amount of attention.

"Yes," he says, and after a pause he adds, "You've always been so hard on yourself when it comes to her."

"You were always her favorite." Azula finally faces her brother. This stings him. The focus of most of their interactions over the years had always been Ozai's affection. For years after their mother's disappearance and Zuko's banishment, Azula prided herself on being favored by their father.

It all means little now that their father is imprisoned.

"You're not a monster," Zuko finally says. "I know you think that's how our mother saw you, but it's not." Azula puckers her lips.

"You're a fool if you believe that," she says. She plucks at the loose thread of her clothes.

"I mean it," Zuko says. "I think, considering everything we've been through, she'd be proud of how you ended up."

"Proud," Azula snorts. "If she's going to patronize me as much as you do, I might not want to see her after all."

" _If_ I find her," Zuko adds. Azula raises her eyebrows.

"You will," she says. There's something about her tone he can't describe. Something certain, something a bit too logical for him to call it hope.

Or maybe, this is as close as she comes to hoping.

Azula stops talking, and Zuko thinks that maybe this is as close as they'll come to camaraderie.

.

.

.

Zuko's sitting on his bed while Katara sits crosslegged on the floor, refusing to look away from the boy across from her. It's too early to tell if it's going to rain today; the sky is still a faded periwinkle as the sun hasn't fully risen, but the air feels thick and humid. She prays the clouds will finally have mercy and allow it to rain, if for no other reason than to have a piece of her element.

"I'm just saying," Zuko begins, his tone a bit defensive. "I really think you could do a lot of good if you were in the South Pole." It takes a lot of self control for Katara not to groan. They should be over this already. There's only so many ways Katara can say she's not going home if she feels like Zuko still needs help, and venturing to find his mother is something she knows will open old wounds and leave him more vulnerable than he can even predict. If he thinks she'd let him suffer through that alone, he's leagues out of his damn mind.

But she knows, even if he won't admit it, something must've happened to bring him back to this point. Between the extra meetings and planning and added stressors, something had to have happened to reset his opinion, if only for this small sliver of time, on her going with him to Ba Sing Se. It's written in the dark circles under his golden eyes, the tenseness of his body, the somberness of his voice. Something happened and she's not sure what it was.

"I _know_ I could," she eventually retorts. The first raindrops begin to fall outside the grand window of Zuko's chamber and when Katara sighs, it feels as though the Earth is sighing with her. "And I will, _after_ we find your mother."

"I really mean it, Katara. Once the military is redistributed and some of my people are there to help rebuild the Water Tribes, it might do some good if you were there to oversee things."

"I'm not letting you go to the Earth Kingdom by yourself," Katara says. Her eyes land on his for a definite moment before she smiles. "You can't get rid of me, you know that? Nothing you do will make me leave you alone, Zuko."

He chuckles quietly. "So it would seem."

It's quiet, except for the faint pitter patter of raindrops finally pelting the Earth and Zuko finally speaks again. "I'm not trying to get rid of you, you know. I'm glad you're coming with me." The warmth that swells up in Katara's belly at Zuko's remark manifests itself as a smile.

And then, it's quiet for a bit, except for the rain. Katara looks at Zuko, and he just looks... _tired_. Shoulders slumped, eyes drooping, struggling, and failing to swallow his yawns. She can't blame him. If anyone had come to wake her at this early hour, she's not sure she'd be any better off than Zuko is now. But it's not just physical with him. It runs far deeper than that. When she came knocking on his door this morning, clutching a dozen scrolls and ignoring the cringes of the guards―who had _strongly_ advised against her waking the Fire Lord―she could tell from one look that he wasn't himself. He was distant and off and... This is proof that he needs her here still, at least for a while longer.

"You know," Katara clears her throat, and Zuko looks up at her for the first time in a while. "I haven't heard anyone mention anything about Mai in this trip." If Zuko tries to hide his reaction, he does a poor job of it. Katara's never seen anyone's face change so rapidly before, from blank to enraged and hurt and back to a false look of indifference.

"She's not going," he says, jaw tight.

"Oh," Katara mumbles. The air is still. "I guess I just assumed―"

"It's just you and me," he says. His voice is definite, affirmative, and despite his averse reaction, Katara can't deny that she's glad it'll just be the two of them on this trip. Zuko, she can work with. Zuko, she can trust. Mai, gloomy, dreary, apathetic Mai... Not so much. Regardless of her justifications of it, it doesn't stop Katara from feeling guilt nip at her for being so selfish for thinking this way.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Katara's words are slow and cautious, as if she's preparing for Zuko to pull back the way he often does whenever he becomes vulnerable like this.

"I'd rather hear about what you came to tell me. You brought up Ba Sing Se and I got sidetracked, but you mentioned that you had something to say." Sidetracked is an understatement, considering the fact that Zuko had taken the conversation and completely steered it from Katara, coming to his room with the intentions of telling him about her recent revelation, and Zuko had somehow managed to regress back into shipping her to the South Pole, but Katara decides to leave well enough alone. She knows he's deflecting the attention away from what's bothering him, but she also knows that soon enough, they'll be out of the Fire Nation and it'll just be them, away from this wretched place. The change of scenery will be good for him. For both of them.

"Well, I do," Katara says. Zuko's interest is obviously piqued.

"Go on."

"Have you been able to narrow down where your mother might be?" Katara asks as she shifts through the scrolls she brought in.

"Nothing concrete," Zuko says. "It's impossible to know for sure where she would've ended up; she was banished almost seven years ago, before my father was coronated. A lot of people didn't know what she looked like, so most wouldn't be able to identify her unless they really saw her eyes." Katara looks confused and Zuko quickly points at his own face. "Gold eyes, like a lot of Fire Nation citizens." Katara nods as Zuko continues on. "There have been possible sightings in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se, understandably, from all the refugees... It's possible that any of them might be her, but I can't really confirm any of it. But most missing people found in Ba Sing Se seem to turn up in the lower ring. It's the easiest place to hide since it has the highest population."

"That's just what I was thinking," Katara says. She grabs the crime reports she'd been looking at the night before. "This won't really help us find your mother, but I was looking at crimes in Ba Sing Se and I started noticing a pattern here, with instances of vandalism and disturbing the peace, but no suspects. People were reporting property damage, but they couldn't identify it. Didn't seem like a weapon was involved, didn't seem like earthbending, couldn't be firebending."

"And what do you think?" Zuko asks. It's incredibly satisfying for Zuko to put so much importance on her opinion.

"Do you remember when I got a few letters sent to me? Sokka sent me one, and he mentioned that there's been rumors of surviving airbenders. And when I was looking at these crime reports, all in the areas where your mother seems to be, I just got to thinking... I know it's a long shot, but... I thought it was an interesting possibility." Zuko seems to be mulling this over.

"Wow," is all he manages to say.

"I mean, we don't necessarily have to do anything about it. I just thought this was something you'd like to know about, as Fire Lord."

"As Fire Lord," Zuko repeats, and he almost cringes as if the weight of these words could crush him. Now, for this brief moment, Katara can see it. She sees Zuko, young, vulnerable, and so completely human, but with a title that binds him to his land and his people, and thrusts a responsibility that no one his age should ever have to carry. She doesn't speak, she merely walks over to his bed and wraps her arms around him. From where he sits, his face is buried in the blue of her tunic, gently pressed against her abdomen, surrounded by her wavy hair. And for a while, they stay like this, Katara, gently holding him and swaying and letting her fingers curl the hairs at the back of his neck, sharing his warmth and letting him, for once, have a moment of weakness.

After a while, Zuko finally reciprocates, throwing his arms around Katara's waist. She continues to sway. Outside, the rain starts to pour.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** ok so. Everything that could've gone wrong with my senior thesis did, and that's why i wasn't updating for almost 4 months this time, but thankfully it's been submitted and i have soooo much more free time. I'm sorry I was gone for so long, but hopefully this chapter was worth the wait (p.s. please still leave reviews so i know if you all liked it and are still interested in this fic)

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Mai feels a lot of things in relation to Zuko. Anger, contempt, apathy, frustration, but hatred doesn't quite make the list. No matter how much she replays the maddening things he's done over again in her mind, she can never quite bring herself to say that she hates him, because she doesn't. She really and truly does not hate Zuko.

But she wishes she did.

Two days have passed since their latest falling out and they haven't spoken since, not even to say ' _hello_ ' in passing, or ' _good morning_ ' or ' _I'm sorry_ ', no matter how many times they cross paths in the palace corridors. To be fair, she's not sure who should even apologize in this situation. She thinks it should be him, she _hopes_ it would be, but she doubts things will play out the way she wants them to. Even if he apologized, he wouldn't mean it. Even if he meant it, she wouldn't believe it.

And so, instead of trying to confront any of this, Mai goes on walks to avoid seeing Zuko in the palace. Mostly, it's to clear her head. The stifling nature of the palace has always gotten under her skin, more so now that she can't even speak Zuko's name without vexation burning a hole in her chest, and so she goes on aimless walks around the Fire Nation to make the days go by faster.

She used to go on walks just to pass the time when Zuko was busy. Katara joined her only once (thankfully, because one time was more than painfully awkward and Mai didn't need to experience it a second time.) Though neither of them had said anything, it seemed like unspoken knowledge that Zuko had set it up―and now Mai wonders if that was just so he could visit Azula. She's just as cross about it as she was two days ago, and she wonders if she'll always feel this way. Zuko's confession put things into perspective for her; no matter what they did or how much time passed, no matter how passive and humble and tight lipped she makes herself, no matter how cordial she is to his friends, she'll always feel suffocated by his past.

But when she goes on these walks, she can escape her own head for a while. There's never any danger in what she does. Her sleeves are lined with knifes, and regardless, she is not the talk of the town. The nation is still recuperating from a century of war. Between all the proposed changes under Zuko's regime and the rumors of the Water Tribe girl he invited to the palace, Mai's existence, just as it has been for most of her life, goes overlooked.

She likes it this way. She doesn't want any of these people parading around like they know her. She needs time to stretch her legs and remember that there is a life outside of the constant political jargon and economic policies that cloud her every conversation with Zuko, so she loses herself in a sea of people and quiets her thoughts for a while. She wouldn't say that _this_ makes her happy, but at the very least it makes her _happier_ than she has been recently, and there's hardly any denying that as of late, her relationship with Zuko is not making her happy. She can't even remember the last time it did.

And so, she walks, until her feet start to ache and the sun sets under a rich, honey sky, and she tries not to look as disappointed when she returns to the palace as she actually is.

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Zuko looks at himself and Katara in the mirror, and cocks his head to the side.

It's been awhile since either of them have been in green. Around the palace, Katara is always donned in blue, despite the insistence from his staff that if he has her here, the least he can do is require her to wear Fire Nation clothing. Which is a stupid request in his opinion, and he's made his stance on the matter known (that Katara is allowed to wear whatever she wants and if he hears of anyone pestering her about her clothing there will be consequences. It's an empty threat of course, but no one brings it up again.) Zuko himself is always in red, mostly wearing clothes that are too regal for the way he views himself, with his hair up in a topknot and his scar a lot more visible than he likes it to be.

But now, in the Earth Kingdom clothes that some of the servants designed specifically so he'd be able to disguise himself in Ba Sing Se, he feels average. Normal. The earthy tones look foreign on his skin after weeks of wearing red, but something about this attire, especially being worn in the palace, makes him feel humble.

In four days, it'll be two weeks since he declared he'd be leaving the Fire Nation to look for his mother, and resolutely, that will be the day he sets off on his quest. Arguably, he needs more time than just a few more days to embark on a mission like this and expect any kind of success, but time is just as much an important factor, so whether or not he is fully prepared, Iroh will stand in for him as Fire Lord, and he will be off in the Earth Kingdom with Katara.

Offhandedly, Zuko wonders if Katara has the same thought as she stands beside him in her own green get up, trying her best not to fidget as servants fiddle with her Earth Kingdom disguise and manipulate her hair in convoluted ways. Initially, Katara had dressed herself in her own chamber, and was then brought to Zuko as he tried his clothes on, so he could inspect both their outfits and make any criticisms he had known all at once, but he was pleased with the way they both looked, a far different opinion than he initially thought he was going to have. At first Zuko argued that Katara didn't _have_ to wear Earth Kingdom clothes to go to Ba Sing Se; people would likely not blink twice seeing a Water Tribe native (whereas they might have a lot of reservations about a Fire Nation civilian). She countered that it'd draw less attention to the both of them if she was in disguise as well, but he did not miss the way her fingers clasped her mother's necklace, knowing that it was a dead giveaway of her ethnicity. He didn't press the issue further.

He also doesn't protest now when the servants fixing his clothing make quick, concise demands of him, _stand like this, hold this position, allow us to hem this better_ despite him looking in the wide paneled mirror ahead of himself and feeling content. He doesn't mind being in green and letting his hair down even though it's starting to get in his eyes.

"How do I look?" Zuko asks, and without missing a single beat, Katara keeps her head straight and in the most deadpan voice says,

"You look absolutely adorable, Fire Lord Zuko."

There's a moment when everyone stills. Zuko whips his head to look at Katara but she's still looking forward, practically biting the inside of her cheek to keep from saying anything more. The servants all exchange glances, at the blatant, patronizing nature of Katara's tone, as if they're waiting to see how Zuko will reprimand her and somehow, that makes the whole situation even more ridiculous. He almost bursts into a fit of laughter when he replies,

"Why thank you, Master Katara. Your kindness is duly noted."

And he looks at her, in her own dark tunic with her face straight ahead, but he can almost see the semblance of a smile on her lips. He looks ahead as well, but he lets his smile show.

.

.

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"I keep asking myself why I'm not enough for you. Why I never was." Zuko snaps his head up to where Mai is standing. He hasn't had much time to come out to the turtleduck pond lately, but today, save for some meetings and getting fitted for an appropriate disguise, he's had just enough space in his schedule to come to his favorite spot. Now that Mai's here, it'll be a while until he'll be out here peacefully again. It's not irritation that he feels right now at her presence, it's something a bit more complicated than that. He feels apprehensive, exhausted almost, because they've had this conversation already. He's sure they've had it more than once. But he doesn't ward her off even when her shadow startles some of the turtleducks into hiding. No matter what she says, he'll listen. No matter what she says, he'll accept. He's tired of arguing and feeling inadequate, and as flawed and dangerous as he knows this mode of thinking is, he's complacent. He has far too much on his mind to still let this drag on.

A halfhearted apology is already on his lips but Mai's words interrupt him.

"I am trying, you know," she says as she takes a seat beside him. Zuko's attention is still on the pond and the shy turtleducks, who seem reluctant to return. "It might not look like it, but I am."

"What are you talking about?" Zuko says. "Is this still about me leaving to find my mother? Because none of that has anything to do with how I feel about you."

"No," Mai says. She picks at the hem of her sleeve. "I mean, I thought it was but… You don't love me Zuko. Not the way I wish you did." His first instinct is to contest this. It's the right thing for him to do in this situation, if his heart was in the right place… but, now that she's speaking these things all at once, he's faced with the damning realization that Mai is right. He doesn't love her the way she wishes he did. And he's not sure he feels bad about it.

"We―Azula, Ty Lee and I―we had a Kyoshi warrior in prison for a long time. And she always talked about the boy she loved coming back for her one day. No matter what we did to her or what we said―" The visible discomfort on Zuko's face reminds Mai to keep this anecdote about the torture of one of his close friends brief. "She always knew he was coming back. And I thought it was stupid, until Azula had me and Ty Lee thrown in prison after what I did for you. And I thought to myself, maybe that Kyoshi warrior wasn't so stupid after all. I thought to myself, 'Zuko will come back'."

"And I didn't," Zuko says.

"I waited for you Zuko," Mai says. "I know if Ty Lee and I tried to get out on our own we wouldn't even make it as far as the gondolas. But, you were skilled enough to sneak in and out. I thought, you love me as much as Katara's brother loved that Kyoshi warrior. You'd come back. You had to come back."

"I didn't even realize―"

"Did you know that Ty Lee incapacitated Azula to save me?" Mai interjects. "She wasn't protecting herself. I was the one that had let you escape on the gondola. If Ty Lee wanted to, she could've let me face Azula on my own, but she didn't. She didn't think twice about taking Azula down when she knew what the consequences were."

The turtleducks are silent.

Zuko is silent.

"And stupid me," Mai continues, "I thought if Ty Lee could stand with me, you could too. So when we were locked up I waited. And I waited and waited. But days went by and weeks went by and suddenly the war was over, but you never came back. I waited for you Zuko. Why didn't you come back? If my uncle hadn't been able to let me out of jail, would you have come back for me?"

"Of course I would have―"

"Please Zuko," Mai says. She sounds tired, defeated. "Don't lie. Would you have?" Zuko bites his lip, and stares out at the pond.

"Honestly Mai, I don't know." His heart slides down into the pit of his stomach when the truth of his statement finally dawns on him. He thinks of what it was like that summer when he stood alongside Aang and risked their lives to learn firebending from the dragons, or when he and Sokka risked their lives to free Hakoda from the Boiling Rock.

A hand finds a way to his chest and he knows it didn't take any thought for him to run in front of lightning for Katara. He only vaguely remembers being sprawled out on the ground, slipping in and out of consciousness and thinking ' _This is it. I'm going to die and this is all I'll ever be._ ' And he can't remember quite how it felt, but he knows, beyond the confusion and adrenaline and pain, he felt secure in his snap judgment. It felt right. He didn't have a single regret.

The next thing he says is a question.

"Would it have made a difference if I had?" he asks. He thumbs the grass aimlessly, and now the words are starting to flow from his tongue; the issues he had buried in the deepest parts of him are suddenly overflowing with a newfound confidence. "Would it still feel like a burden to listen when I try to open up to you? Would it still feel like you had to change yourself when I needed you to be there for me? Would we still argue about everything? Politics? The Hundred Year War? My values? Yours?"

Mai stares at the pond, and shrugs. "I don't know."

"You know more about my past than most people, you know. You know why I was banished, you know about my mother, my whole family, and I feel like I _should_ be able to open up to you but I just… _can't_. And I haven't felt this way since I last talked to…" Zuko stops himself, because he knows what he's about to say is unforgivable, but if he's being honest, he _has_ to tell her.

"Since you talked to who, Zuko?"

"My father." He can practically hear her gasp, and when he looks at her, she's got her tongue pressed to the inside of her cheek, but he forges on. "You know how much I thought I needed his approval and how much he made me run around like an eelhound for his love. And… You're not Ozai. You're never going to be what he is to me. But I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't feel like I'm constantly doing everything to please you when nothing ever seems to work. And I don't want to feel this way forever."

"I see," she says.

"What if I _had_ saved you at the Boiling Rock, and brought you along with the avatar?" Zuko asks. "Would you have been happy helping him? Would you have fought with us? Would you ridicule every step I take as Fire Lord now if you could see how I got to this point?"

"I don't ridicule you."

"You don't respect me."

A stalemate. Mai is silent this time.

"I think," Zuko pauses, as if to regain his footing in the conversation. "I think this was always our problem. You, thinking you were never enough. Me, thinking I was always too much. Too loud. Too emotional. Too angry. Too unstable. Too hard to love."

"I did love you," Mai says. "Don't you dare contest that."

" _Did_ ," Zuko says. The word puts a grim look on his face. "And how do you feel now?"

"I feel like… We can't keep pretending like we're compatible." Mai stands to leave, this time, leaving Zuko sitting in her shadow as she turns her back on him. Zuko knows this is not like the other times; this is final, and if he lets her leave, the damage will be too irreparable for him to ever beckon her name again.

"Mai," he says. He thinks of all the things he could do to make her stay, what he can't think of, is a reason to actually do any of them. Mai stops in her tracks to look at him, and he's tempted, maybe just to reciprocate her feelings, to say that he loved her too, but she knows that. She _should_ know that. And instead, he stares at her and her glowering eyes and says, "I promise I'll come back this time."

"I won't be waiting for you. But I hope you finally find whatever you're looking for, Zuko. I really do." Mai takes a step forward and the turtleducks slowly begin to make rounds in the pond again as she utters one last sentence. "Did Katara know about Azula?"

Zuko doesn't reply, but he knows his silence speaks for him.

Even after Mai is gone, the turtleducks remain silent.

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.

.

Katara tries not to yawn too loudly as she's escorted through the palace by one of the guards to Zuko's chamber. She's almost accustomed to being woken in the middle of the night now, if not by or for Zuko, by her own hellish nightmares, and so she can't complain. Especially not to this guard. The way the palace staff have been treating her hasn't exactly improved, but it also hasn't worsened, so even when she rolled out of bed and struggled to push her mountain of hair out of her face just to be summoned to Zuko's room, she made no effort to be conversational.

She almost likes the palace now. Though it's still too big to be homey and is brimming with insufferable people, she's starting to learn the layout and even in her sleepy state, she's able to call the twists and turns it takes to get to Zuko's room. She's alerted with every step it takes to get to his room, slowly but surely perking up as they inch closer to the grand doors of Zuko's chamber. It's only when his room is in sight that curiosity really starts to get the best of her. Normally, if this were an issue of health, there would be no secrecy in why she was summoned. If Zuko was sick or injured, she would've been informed, or at the very least, she would've been ushered to his room at a much faster pace. But still, when they finally reach his door an unsettling feeling starts to drape itself upon her.

Something isn't right. She wastes no time in finding it what it is.

She enters his chamber without so much as a knock and quietly says, "You beckoned?" A few candles are lit all around to offer at least a bit of light, but not enough to take the strain off her eyes. The only thing her vision latches onto is Zuko, who's pacing back and forth in the middle of his room, wringing his hands together as if he were guilty of something, though what that could be Katara doesn't know.

"I should've told you this sooner," is his opening line, and Katara instantly feels anxiousness overwhelm her.

"Okay," she says. His pacing only continues, back and forth in front of her like a pendulum, and she stands, confused but still beside him as he moves. He doesn't say anything. He barely even looks at her. He just keeps his pattern of stepping in one straight line across from her, and his reluctance to speak only raises her concerns. She clears her throat to make sure she sounds as steady and confident as possible when she finally provokes the dialogue to resume. "What should you have told me?"

"I thought about telling you after I'd told Mai, but she took it so badly and broke up with me, and I wasn't even sure how I'd mention it to you. So I just avoided the issue altogether until she brought it up again and I realized how unfair I was being for withholding this information from you―"

"What are you going on about?" Katara asks. Zuko's pacing does not slow down. She only vaguely manages to hold on to bits and pieces of his ramble, _Mai, a break up, witholding things_ it's hard to keep track when he won't even pause to breathe. Katara's not even sure if he's really listening to her when she interjects. He continues pacing and babbling, some of it too fast and garbled for her to make out any of it and in a faulty attempt to get him to refocus, Katara jumps in front of him and grabs his shoulders so he has no choice but to look at her.

"Zuko, you're hardly making any sense right now," Katara says. She also wants to add that he's scaring her, not because she thinks he'll hurt her but because she can't tell if he might hurt _himself_ and his erratic behavior makes her unsure of how to approach this situation. She keeps him standing still, tightening her grip just enough to feel his pulse slowing down ever so slightly, and even in the poor lighting, she sees his eyes wavering less as he regains some composure.

"I'm sorry. You're right, I'm so sorry," he says. "It's just… I can't―I can't ask you to go to Ba Sing Se with me if I'm not being transparent with you, but… I'm just… I'm afraid…"

"Of what?" She drops her voice a few decibels and gives him a chance to continue. "You can talk to me, if you want to. You know that." Zuko sighs, and his whole body shudders from the force of it.

"I do," he mutters. "I just don't know what you're going to say. And that's the hard part."

"You'll never know if you don't talk to me," Katara says. Her hands fall from Zuko's shoulders but his expression still softens a bit. He's not quite smiling, at least he doesn't look like he _really_ is, but he's calmer. He's taking deeper breaths and relaxing.

"I know," Zuko says. He turns away from her and walks toward a dresser on the other side of his room. "And I will, if you're willing to go for a walk with me."

"What are you doing?" Katara asks, but within a moment, he's back at her side, handing her a cloak to drape herself with, and throwing another one over his own shoulders. She's taken aback by the sudden switch in his actions; one moment he can't stop letting his words fill up space and the next, he's buzzing around the room, barely explaining anything.

"I'm going to take you somewhere, and I need you to trust me." Zuko begins to walk to the door but Katara lags behind, not even taking a step behind him. She looks at the cloak in her hands, then back at Zuko, unable to read his expression in the dark lighting. Maybe he put distance between them for that very reason. Maybe he's more levelheaded in this situation than she originally thought.

"Where are we going?" Katara asks. "Can you please stop being so cryptic and talk to me?"

"Where doesn't matter," Zuko says. "It's not a far walk, it's a little hut on palace grounds. It's _who_ we're going to see that matters. But it's like I told you, I need you to trust me, at least just until we get there. Can you just award me that? And trust that I'll explain what's going on when we get there?"

Katara responds, but not with words. She throws her own coat over her shoulders and follow Zuko out of his chamber.


End file.
